Even though we’re facing a truly gloomy November, there is still hope for the economy

We may not know how long the latest lockdown will last, but we have a template to help us gauge what will happen to the economy and plan for it, writes Hamish McRae

Boris Johnson has announced another lockdown in a bid to curb the second wave (Getty)

Here we go again. The new lockdown for England brings back unpleasant memories of the spring – but without the redeeming bonus of brilliant weather. It is a small comfort to note that similar policies are being unrolled across most of Europe, or that the hope is that this one might only last for four weeks. We just don’t know.

We do however have a template to help us gauge what will happen to the economy and plan for it: the experience of the spring. In some ways what will happen in the coming weeks is likely to be worse than before, and in some ways better. But we must also be prepared for surprises.

The bad news first. This lockdown hits a much weaker economy. At the beginning of this year, the economy was still solid, having had a decade of more-or-less uninterrupted growth. Now, we have recovered about two-thirds of the ground lost in the spring, but that is an overall estimate. Some parts are fine, others absolutely not. As a result the finances of most companies, though obviously not all, are much weaker now – as indeed are the personal finances of many of us.