Slow economic growth won’t help the Tories reduce the tax burden

The Office for National Statistics has released the UK’s quarterly national accounts this morning, which show growth in the second quarter of the year remains unrevised at 0.2 per cent. Meanwhile growth in the first quarter has been revised slightly upwards, from 0.1 per cent to 0.3 per cent. This means the economy is now 1.8 per cent larger than it was before the pandemic hit.

This is another upward revision of growth figures, though much smaller compared to the update at the start of the month, which revealed the economy was not in fact still below its pre-pandemic levels, but had actually recovered by the time the Omicron variant hit in 2021.

This morning’s update will be considered good news: it now appears that the UK has rebounded faster from Covid than both France and Germany (today’s revision just edges France’s 1.7 per cent growth). The update also pushes away immediate fears of recession.