So, Alistair Darling was right. The economy has been growing faster and bigger than expected. New figures, as my colleague George Eaton has reported, show growth of 1.1 per cent in April to June, against the forecast of 0.6 per cent. As George says, this trend speaks strongly against imposing cuts now.

There is another point here: leading economists are pointing out that we should not get excited about a general upturn in the economy, and one of the reasons is that at least half of that growth is said to have come from active intervention pursued by the last government.

Therefore, given this coalition's diametrically opposed, non-interventionist approach, the prospect of a "double-dip" recession, long predicted by our own Danny Blanchflower, is far from off the agenda.