Today’s GDP data reveals one thing: Mark Carney should have kept his cool after Brexit

Inflation is rising. Real wages are stagnant, and GDP is being revised downwards, putting us down there with the likes of Italy. If Theresa May had a script for the final fortnight of the election campaign it probably didn’t include figures like those. Today’s revision of the quarterly GDP number, down to a sluggish-looking 0.2 percent, from the initial 0.3 percent, will no doubt be seized upon by critics of the government, and by the increasingly battle-weary battalions of hardcore Remainers, as evidence that the wheels are finally coming off the economy, and the impact of a ‘hard Tory Brexit’ is finally being felt. In fact, however, it tells us something quite different. The UK is certainly slowing down in the first half of this year. But that is because the Bank of England over-stimulated in the immediate aftermath of the referendum.

At the best of times, GDP data is not a 100 percent accurate.