Move over Jams, next year this time the focus may be on PGPs

Gloomy UK economy forecast for 2017 may compel the chancellor to provide for 'poor getting poorer' alongside the 'just about managing'

The new chancellor could barely have hoped for a better backdrop. High street spending is booming, inflation remains low, unemployment is the lowest it's been for more than a decade. And all that despite the shock referendum result and warnings from people like Bank of England governor Mark Carney and the International Monetary Fund that a vote to leave could spark recession.

But it would be a very unwise chancellor who said Britain had escaped this vote unscathed. Brexit negotiations have not even started and in crucial areas such as business investment very little data is available at this point to reveal quite how much the referendum upheaval has knocked the economy off course.