A bad week to bury relatively good news from the economic front

The news agenda has gone mad. Imagine this is the issue of 27 October 1917, and our headlines are filled with allegations concerning the depravities of the late Mr Oscar Wilde, calls for a new enquiry into police handling of the 1888 Match Girls’ Strike, and rumours that Mr Bonar Law is habitually rude to servants — while reports of the first engagement of US infantry, a potential turning point in the war in France, are consigned to the inside pages. That’s more or less how it is today: analysis of what may be a turning point in the great economic war, at least on the domestic front if not on the more tumultuous European one, barely makes it into the bulletins at all.

But by the time you read this, the Office for National Statistics should have announced a growth bounce in the third quarter of up to 0.7 per cent. Consumer optimism is at its highest level for a year (according to a Deloitte survey), inflation on the Consumer Prices Index measure is down to 2.2 per cent, and the number of people in work grew by 212,000 in the quarter to August, to a record 29.6 million; 170,000 fewer people are claiming out-of-work benefits than they were two years ago, and youth unemployment is also falling.

Given job cuts in the public sector and financial services, plus hiring freezes in most major companies other than supermarket chains, these numbers suggest a positive fever of activity in the small-to-medium company sector where sustained recoveries traditionally take root. And that chimes with my favourite indicator, the StartUp Britain Tracker of new business registrations, which is about to hit 400,000 for the year to date. Of course, as in 1917, there will be setbacks and darker days to come. But wouldn’t it be good to see all this on the front page, in place of Jimmy Savile?