‘The UK economy is on the mend’ was the principal headline from the Concluding Statement of the International Monetary Fund’s 2010 Article IV Consultation, released on 27 September. It boosted the coalition’s confidence at a time when most of the economic indicators were unhelpfully pointing to a slowdown in the recovery and provided timely and welcome fodder for the Conservative Party conference.

Glancing through the analysis, it looks like a paper that has been written to encourage and somehow it puts me in mind of the Johnny Mercer/Harold Arlen song: You’ve got to accentuate the positive Eliminate the negative Latch on to the affirmative Don’t mess with Mister In-Between In fairness, the statement isn’t as wholly optimistic as the headline suggests. It acknowledges that ‘downside risks are also sizeable, given the continued fragility of confidence, still-strained balance sheets among households and banks, signs of renewed housing market weakness and the possibility that headwinds from fiscal consolidation could turn out to be more powerful than expected’.

But the