It is the fact of the day, a nugget of information that will delight Brexiteers and reassure corporate Britain. The Office for National Statistics believes that output in the dominant services sector rose 0.4pc month-on-month and 2.9pc year-on-year in July. This is the first real, official output data after Brexit, and it’s better than even I – a relative optimist – had expected.

It confirms not just that there was no immediate economic collapse after the referendum vote, despite the political vacuum and financial market turmoil, but that the economy continued to grow at a very decent rate. All the business surveys that pointed to the opposite outcome were wrong, and should from now on be treated as far less useful by the financial establishment.

Several economists have now upgraded their third quarter GDP estimates to 0.4pc, twice the Bank of England’s prediction. If this or something like it eventually materialises, this will be not just humiliating for the Bank but will further under­mine the rationale for cutting rates and bolstering QE. Extreme monetary policy comes with many side-effects; it should only be used in a real economic emergency.

Remarkably, capital spending drove the economy in the second quarter, which ran until the end of June and included the referendum campaign. As a result, the overall economy grew by 0.7pc, driven by investment growth of 1pc, an expansion in capex that was twice as large as previously estimated.