Making a mockery of the doom-laden warnings of the architects of Project Fear before the Brexit vote, the Office for National Statistics said GDP rose by 1.8 per cent in 2017. Households and businesses increased spending to record levels, while exporters profited from booming demand worldwide for British goods. Just weeks before the referendum, then-chancellor George Osborne warned ‘a vote to leave would represent an immediate and profound shock to our economy’. With just a year to go before Britain leaves the EU on March 29, 2019, ONS figures showed the economy grew by 1.8 per cent last year. Meanwhile household spending rose 1.7 per cent to a record £1.2trillion, while investment rose by 4 per cent to a record £331.7billion – the strongest increase in the G7 industrialised nations.

Source: Daily Mail March 29, 2018 23:37 UTC