Politically speaking, recessions are strange things. They make for terrible headlines, and the latest announcement – right on the eve of two by-elections – couldn’t have been more poorly timed for the embattled Conservatives.

Yet there is also something slightly abstract about them. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed the economy shrank by 0.3 per cent in the three months up to December last year. In other words, we the voters have already lived through the period in question. We already know whether we felt financially stretched, whether the public services we needed were functioning properly, and all the rest of it. What difference does the ONS discovery really make?

Perhaps this risks sounding like Tory excuse-making, so let’s reverse the scenario. Imagine the ONS had discovered instead that the economy had expanded by 0.3 per cent in the same period. Doubtless Jeremy Hunt would be straight out of the traps, talking about how the Government was delivering “growth” and advising that voters should, as Rishi Sunak recently put it, “stick with our........

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