An oil price surge from $60 to $72 per barrel, as happened after the drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq refinery caused a sudden 6 per cent cut to global supply, would once have been taken as a sure signal of economic troubles ahead.

A 1990s study of postwar oil prices plotted against employment and other data by Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick University showed that every spike in energy costs had shortly been followed by recession.