The new Labour Government has been in full spin cycle since taking power but, two-and-a-half months on from its election victory, it has yet to come up with anything that suggests it is going to boost the UK’s growth meaningfully.

Quite the opposite, in fact, with its noisy declarations about the poor state of the public finances and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s warning about “tough” choices evoking memories of David Cameron and George Osborne arriving on the scene in 2010 with their ill-judged austerity.

It was interesting, though not surprising, to hear Ian Murray stick very much with this party line from Labour and Sir Keir when the Secretary of State for Scotland addressed hundreds of guests at the Confederation of British Industry’s Scottish dinner in Glasgow last week. Mr Murray ladled it on thick when it came to talking about the grim situation Labour had inherited from the Tories, and his portrayal of difficult days ahead would surely have done nothing to lift the spirits of those who would like to see less miserable times for the Scottish and broader UK economies.

Sir Keir continues to look very much like a man without a plan for growth. He has ruled out rejoining the European single market, which would provide an enormous and straightforward fillip to growth if it could be achieved. And he has tied Labour up with the failed Conservatives’ fiscal rules.

Meanwhile, Labour’s tone towards the UK oil and gas sector has seemed unduly hostile, and its pledge to end new North Sea exploration licences has looked naïve. After all, recent years have shown up the UK’s woeful lack of energy security and no one should be in any doubt about the huge economic importance of the North Sea. This sector is particularly important in a Scottish context.

All of this lamentable backdrop made some miserable UK gross domestic product data published last week all the more dispiriting to read.

The data from the Office for National Statistics showed the UK........

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