George Osborne puts on a brave face over slow economic growth figures

George Osborne put on a brave face today. With just over a week to go before the election, his economic recovery suddenly appears to be running out of steam.

Economic growth in the first three months of the year dropped to 0.3 per cent, from 0.6 percent at the end of last year. Economists in the City had forecast only a slight dip to 0.5 per cent.

I spoke to the chancellor today at a factory in Loughborough. Sitting just in front of a half-finished electrical substation (which looked in danger of zapping him if it were turned on) he conceded that “we’ve clearly reached a critical moment” but insisted “we need to finish the job” on the recovery and "with rising instability abroad now would be the wrong time to switch” to Labour.

But Labour has seized on the numbers, as you’d expect, saying “these figures show [the Conservatives] have not fixed the economy for working families."

The blame for the drop falls mainly on business services and finance but a big drop in mining and quarrying (which includes North Sea oil where output is slowing) also pulled the overall number down.

But details like that don’t really matter when the overall headline is a slowdown.

Economists expect growth to pick up in months to come. Anecdotal evidence from firms and lobbying bodies like the CBI suggest that businesses are doing a bit better than today's GDP figures suggest.

It will come too late to help the Conservatives in this election – tough but that’s politics, I suppose.