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The UK economy will be plunged into recession for more than a year this autumn as rising energy prices push inflation above 13%, the Bank of England has warned. In a bleak outlook for consumers and business, the bank forecast five quarters of economic contraction and a 5% fall in real-terms living standards, and increased interest rates by 0.5 percentage points, the largest single rise in 27 years. The bank's baseline forecast is for GDP to fall by 1.25% in 2023 and 0.25% in 2024, the first instance of two years of annual economic contraction since the 1960s.

A series of positive UK economic data has defied economists' predictions of a sharp downturn immediately after the Brexit vote. The FT's Martin Sandbu and Chris Giles unpick why consumer spending has been so strong and discuss the outlook for 2017.

Britain’s economy appears to be shrinking at its fastest pace since the global financial crisis as a result of the vote to leave the European Union, but the rest of the region is holding up, surveys showed Friday. The findings come as global financial leaders meeting in China identified the uncertainty generated by Britain’s decision to exit the EU, the world’s biggest economic bloc, as a key risk to the global economy. But while the International Monetary Fund has trimmed its world growth estimates, surveys of hundreds of business executives in Europe indicate the economic damage is so far largely...

The dismal US job figures came as the National Institute of Economic and Social Research predicted a protracted depression for the UK economy. Across the Atlantic talk of a double-dip recession was revived when the government revealed 131,000 jobs were lost last month. That dwarfed forecasts for a fall of 65,000. June's drop was also revised to a far steeper 221,000 from 125,000. The July drop was mainly due to work by temporary staff on the government census coming to an end. But private hiring was also weaker than expected. The spectre of a double-dip recession was also raised in...