British economy grows fastest in G7 - strong progress but we still spend more than we earn

Britain grew at the fastest pace of all G7 leading nations last year and the economy did not skip a beat after the Brexit vote, official figures have confirmed. The gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 0.6 per cent in the final three months of 2016, the same rate of growth as in the previous two quarters, in stark contrast to the Treasury’s warning before the referendum that the country would slip into recession if it voted to leave the EU. Over the year as a whole, Britain grew by 2 per cent, down from 2.2 per cent in 2015 but better than estimates for growth in the rest of the G7, including the US. Britain has now topped the world’s leading economies for two of the past three years.