Britain’s economy grew by 0.6% in the first quarter of 2026, after expanding by 0.3% in March, giving Chancellor Rachel Reeves fresh ground to defend her economic plan on a day when the data will be read as evidence that activity held up despite wider strain.
Reeves said the figures showed her government had the right economic plan and argued that the choices she had made as chancellor left the economy in a stronger position as it dealt with the costs of the war in Iran. “Now is not the time to put our economic stability at risk,” she said.
The quarterly rise followed growth of 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and extends a pattern that has become familiar since 2022. James Smith said he was not convinced by the first-quarter performance, noting that growth has often been stronger in the first three months of the year than in the rest, with the economy averaging 0.6% in Q1 over that period and typically flattening in the third quarter. He added that the latest figure is “up from 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2025.”
That pattern matters because it shapes the reading of how much momentum the economy actually carried into 2026. Sandra Horsfield said the UK economy entered the period of the Iran conflict with “considerable momentum,” suggesting the latest numbers do not show an economy starting from weakness. But the figures are also being viewed through the lens of revisions and a statistical debate that has been building for months.
The Office for National Statistics said it is assessing its approach to seasonal adjustments and has already made changes that lowered its forecast for first-quarter growth in both 2024 and 2025. It said headline GDP growth in 2024 Q1 is now 0.7%, down from a previous estimate of 0.8%, and 0.6% in 2025 Q1, down from 0.7% before the revision.
Smith said the repeated strength in early-year numbers may not be entirely clean. “Why? It’s hard to say exactly what’s happening. But it seems that something’s not quite right with the way the data is being seasonally-adjusted, a legacy we suspect of higher inflation and the timing of annual price hikes,” he said. The ONS, for its part, said its seasonal adjustment process had reassessed past quarters after another strong first-quarter outcome.
That leaves today’s report doing two jobs at once. It gives Reeves a stronger line in support of her economic strategy, and it also keeps alive the question of how much confidence should be placed in the quarterly pattern until the statistical quirks are settled. The next test will be whether growth can hold up beyond the first three months of the year, where it has often looked best.
