Are we going to end 2023 with a recession after all? The great non-arriving recession of 2023 has so far confounded the forecasts of the Bank of England (which forecast a shrinking economy throughout 2023), the IMF (which forecast growth of -0.6 per cent over the course of the year) and others, too. But could the statisticians now be riding to the rescue of the forecasters’ reputations?

This morning the Office for National Statistics has revised its estimate that the economy flatlined in the third quarter of the year and now says it shrank by 0.1 per cent. It also revised downwards its estimate for the second quarter, from growth of 0.2 per cent to zero growth. It means that we are only the tiniest of whiskers away from being in a recession already (that being defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth), and greatly increases the likelihood that Britain will be confirmed as being in recession once the figures for the fourth quarter are published in the New Year. The third quarter – at least on the ONS’s first estimate – began with a chunky fall of 0.3 per cent in output in October.

The brighter news is that retail sales volumes recorded an increase in November, of 1.3 per cent, up from zero in October. The rise was all-round – up 2.3 per cent in non-food, 0.8 per cent in food and 0.6 per cent in fuel. But we might need to be a little bit wary. According to the retailers themselves, some of the rise may have had to do with Black Friday sales being brought earlier, into November.   We might expect, therefore, sales in December to be a little flatter than might otherwise have been the case.

Sales figures for Black Friday over the years do rather call into question the practice of holding sales before Christmas rather than afterwards, as used to be the case. When Black Friday first became a phenomenon in Britain it caused large fillip in sales. The Black Friday effect continued strongly until 2019, but since then it has tailed off. Retailers, it seems, are trying to compensate for lower interest in Black Friday by bringing the event further forward. If this continues it will end up as an autumn sale rather than a pre-Christmas one.

It greatly increases the likelihood that Britain will be confirmed as being in recession

But whatever happens in future years, the existence of Black Friday has made it much more difficult for the retail sector to prop up the economy in January. At the moment, the non-arriving recession of 2023 looks almost certain to be confirmed next year. That will not help the Conservatives, although they do rather look doomed anyway. A strong economy in 1997 didn’t, in any case, rescue John Major, who crashed to defeat anyway. Arguably a positive economic outlook added to the scale of his defeat as it neutralised the economy – traditionally a Conservative strong point – as an election issue, making people more comfortable about voting for Tony Blair.

On current figures the present recession, if it turns out that way, would not be a very deep one. Indeed, it evidently falls within the Office of National Statistics’s margin of error.