Despite one or two scares along the way, the UK has not suffered a recession since the deep slump of 2008-09, but it came close to one this year. The economy contracted in the second quarter and for a while there were fears that it could do so again in the three months to September.

Those fears have proved misplaced. The City expects the Office for National Statistics to announce growth of 0.3% tomorrow when it unveils its first estimate of third-quarter gross domestic product. The Bank of England has pencilled in a 0.4% expansion.

Either way, Boris Johnson is going to be spared the embarrassment of explaining to the voters why he has called a general election with the economy in recession.

That’s not saying all that much, though. The Bank said that, over 2019, the economy is likely to grow by an average of 0.2% per quarter – half its rate of expansion in 2018. Investment has fallen in five of the past six quarters, leaving the economy increasingly dependent on consumer spending. And here, too, there are worrying signs. Consumers have started to save more, an indication they are anxious about the prospects for both the economy and their own finances. Britain is running on fumes.

It is not just the GDP figures that will be released this week. Tuesday sees data for the labour market, Wednesday the latest on inflation levels and Thursday news about how much consumers are spending in the shops and online. By the end of the week we should have a reasonably clear picture of the current state of the economy.

By that point, the political spin doctors will have gone into overdrive, with one set arguing that the figures show that Britain is booming and another saying it is in dire straits. The truth, as ever, is more nuanced. The good news for the government is that employment levels are high, unemployment is low, and earnings are rising more rapidly than prices. The bad news is that the labour market appears to have peaked in the summer, with gently rising unemployment leading to a slight fall in earnings growth.

The story of past elections is that governments can win them – as happened in 1992 – with the economy struggling, and that they can lose them – as in 1997 – with the economy going gangbusters. What matters to voters is not so much whether the economy is growing by 0.3% or 0.4% but which party can craft the better narrative.

Labour’s narrative is simple. Years of austerity are to blame for the fact that the economy is growing so sluggishly and that earnings – when adjusted for inflation – are still well below where they were when the last recession began in 2008. Time for a change is always a powerful electoral message, and after a lost decade of growth for wages and productivity, it should be even more powerful.

The Conservatives will have a different take. They will point to the delay in delivering Brexit as the reason for the economic slowdown this year and promise that once the uncertainty is ended, a wave of pent-up investment will be unleashed. This is hyperbole. There will, as Mark Carney suggested last week, be some bounce-back in activity now that a no-deal Brexit is off the table, but it won’t be spectacular, and growth over the next few years is expected to be modest by pre-financial-crisis standards.

That may not matter, though. The Conservative pitch to voters is that while the economy is perhaps not in the best of shapes, it would be doing a lot worse if Labour were in charge. Will it work? It did in 1992.

Parties say they want a green revolution, but it could take years

Britain’s main political parties are entering the general election with – by popular demand – plans for the green economy at the centre of their campaigns. For the first time, polling by YouGov has put the climate crisis among the top three issues facing the country, behind Brexit and the NHS.

But will the parties offer realistic environmental policies, or unworkable political one-upmanship? Labour is expected to follow the example of the Green party’s manifesto in bringing forward the government’s existing ambition to become carbon neutral by 2050. It’s an admirable ambition, with a hefty price tag.

The Greens would spend £100bn a year to create a “net zero carbon” economy by 2030. Labour plans to spend £250bn on a green fund that would prop up new investments in clean energy and transport projects for a decade. Both are expected to raise taxes and government borrowing to support their plans.

But kicking the UK’s carbon addiction will require far more than just cash. Pledges are the easy part, but forging a new path necessitates detailed planning.

The government’s official climate adviser, the Committee on Climate Change, has warned that the earliest date by which the UK could meet a net zero carbon target without serious economic risks is 2050. Over a 30-year period, the country could plan meticulously and take careful investment decisions to lower the risk of wasting public money. But even this would require a step-change in ambition in a country that is on track to miss its 2030 climate targets by quite a margin.

This is more than a fight between eco-warriors wary of wasting time and economic pragmatists wary of wasting money. A bungled eco- transition would cost Britain both. A green revolution is nothing without a very careful plan of attack.

Bookies’ safer gambling plan looks set to fall at the first fence

Shares in UK gambling firms have tanked since last week, when an influential group of MPs called for much stricter regulation of online casinos, including stake limits akin to those imposed on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs).

In response the Betting and Gaming Council, a lobby group launched this month to replace the trade bodies that proved ineffective in their defence of FOBTs, wheeled out a five-point “safer gambling” plan.

It would be cynical in the extreme to suggest that bookies concocted these proposals in response to the hit their shares took at the idea of stricter regulation. It is much more likely that the Betting and Gaming Council prepared this olive branch some time ago, proffering it in good time for the annual Responsible Gambling week (7-13 November).

Even so, longtime industry observers are left distinctly unimpressed. Some see the safer gambling manifesto as an act of self-preservation, a minor sacrifice offered up to stave off something more draconian. Others point to elements of the plan that look like flotsam resurfaced from the wreckage of long-neglected commitments.

It is certainly a far cry from the quiver of sharp-edged proposals put forward by the MPs. These included hard stake limits and new legislation to replace the Gambling Act, which they described as “analogue legislation in a digital age”.

Labour, which drew up the existing act under Tony Blair, has already swung its weight behind a much tougher successor. Westminster sources say the Tory wonks currently writing their manifesto for the election are open to the idea too.

A new Gambling Act would bring us full circle. The Betting and Gaming Council is chaired by Brigid Simmonds, once a key figure at lobby group Business in Sport and Leisure, which had a lot of input into the current act. She now faces becoming the mouthpiece of the industry as that legislation is torn to shreds.