The British people and certainly their government may sigh with relief after the International Monetary Fund said that the UK has the fastest growing economy out of all the major developed countries.
The IMF expects Britain to grow faster than the US, Germany, France, Canada and other nations. As a result, the agency has increased its forecast for UK growth to 3.2% in 2015.
The IMF said Britain’s rapid growth was an “upside surprise”.
Britain's economy has at last reached the point where it is just slightly ahead of where it was at its pre-financial crisis peak.
It is now 0.2% bigger than the peak in the first three months of 2008.
Growth was driven overwhelmingly by the services sector which accounts for nearly 78% of the whole economy.
Manufacturing and production, 15% of the economy, was also up, while both construction and agricultural output were slightly down.
The government has tried to “rebalance” the economy towards a greater contribution from manufacturing to the economy which is still in the clear embrace of services.
Britain was the second to last member of the G7 Group to achieve again what it had already achieved. Germany passed its pre-crisis peak in 2010 and the US and France managed it in 2011, although France has since begun to slide backwards.
The recovery in the UK took much longer than in past recessions, including the Great Depression. It took 6.3 long years with more than 1.1 million people in work than had been at the 2008 peak. This means that it took more people to be as productive as in 2008.
For everyday people, living standards remain lower than they were at the peak. Wages are rising more slowly than before 2008 and prices are much higher, especially for property, petrol, gas and electricity.
