Travellers on the London Underground will be the familiar with the exhortation to “mind the gap”. Some of the older stations have curved platforms. As the railway carriages are straight, passengers who enter them have to step over some space between the train and ground when entering and leaving. The gaps are usually small enough and the instructions clear enough to prevent disaster. The key point is that there is no argument about either the existence of these gaps or their width.

What a difference from the state of the British (or any other) economy. After a hesitant start to the year, it is now clear that it is growing at least at a moderate pace. The increase in the official gross domestic product growth estimates from a very slow 0.3 per cent in the first quarter to 0.6 per cent in the second has long been foreshadowed; and there are signs that at least this rate will continue for most of this year. Expressed in annualised terms we seem to be at least on a 1-4 per cent growth trajectory. One might try to narrow this range to, say, 2?-3 per cent; but this is an area where the more precise one tries to be, the less accurate the result. The latest CBI quarterly trends survey shows a positive balance with 29 per cent of those questioned expecting an output increase in the coming months, compared with 15 per cent expecting a decrease. The picture in continental Europe is not very different outside the peripheral euro economies. The US economy is somewhat more buoyant but this partly reflects a more rapidly expanding population as well as a more expansionist economic policy.

The UK argument is likely to shift from a dispute on whether economic recovery is really happening to a discussion on whether the recovery rate is about right, too slow or just possibly too fast. This calls to mind a bitter argument under the Wilson Labour government of the 1960s between the Treasury and the now defunct Department of Economic Affairs on whether the UK should aim at an average annual growth rate of 4 per cent or whether 3 per cent was safer. The National Plan, published in 1965, came down nearer the DEA’s view and envisaged a growth rate of 3.8 per cent a year over the period 1964-70. But after a series of crises and squeezes, proximately due to a series of runs on sterling, not even the Treasury estimate was achieved. Despite the stimulus of a forced devaluation in November 1967 the growth rate over the period came to less than 2.9 per cent a year.