Does strong economic growth so far in 2024 bode well for Rachel Reeves? Don’t count on it

Poor weather in early summer may have kept shoppers spending in the shops. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

In the first half of the year the UK economy grew at a faster pace than many economists believed was possible for the whole of 2024.

Official figures show a rise of 0.6% in the second quarter and 0.7% increase in the first three months of the year, pushing the growth rate above the 1% mark some analysts had said at the start of the year was the likely maximum rate of expansion.