Growth. Sort of.

The UK economy expanded by 0.1% between July and September. Let’s not pop the vintage Krug just yet. In the world of high-growth tech, a 0.1% bump isn't a success story; it’s a rounding error. It’s the kind of margin that makes a product manager sweat during a quarterly review. But for Keir Starmer’s Downing Street, this decimal point is being treated like a miraculous recovery.

The Office for National Statistics dropped these numbers against a backdrop of pure, unadulterated dread. For weeks, the narrative has been dominated by the upcoming Labour budget, a fiscal event that has everyone from FTSE 100 CEOs to the guy running a three-person dev shop in Shoreditch looking for the nearest exit. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, spent the lead-up talking about "tough choices" and a £22 billion black hole. It’s hard to get the engine humming when the person at the wheel keeps screaming that the car is about to explode.

Business investment hasn't exactly been a riot. It’s more of a cautious crawl. Companies are sitting on cash, paralyzed by the fear of what the Capital Gains Tax might look like once the Treasury gets its pens out. When you tell the market that things are going to get worse before they get better, don’t be surprised when the market decides to take a very long lunch break.

It’s the friction that kills you. We’re told the UK is going to be a "clean energy superpower" and a "global hub for AI." Great. Sounds lovely on a slide deck. But the reality is a planning system that treats a new data center like a chemical weapons factory. You want to build the infrastructure for the next decade? Good luck. You’ll be stuck in a public inquiry until the hardware is obsolete.

The 0.1% growth isn't a sign of health; it’s a sign of a patient who’s finally stopped flatlining but still can't sit up in bed. Service industries—the stuff that actually keeps the lights on—grew by a measly 0.1%. Manufacturing actually contracted. Construction grew, mostly because we’re desperately trying to fix the crumbling schools we ignored for a decade. It’s not a strategy. It’s a mop-up operation.

Then there’s the "vibecession." Even if the numbers aren't technically in the red, it feels like they are. Consumer confidence is in the basement. People are looking at their energy bills, their grocery receipts, and the looming threat of tax hikes, and they’re making the rational choice: they’re doing nothing. They aren't buying the new MacBook. They aren't upgrading the SaaS subscription. They’re waiting for the blow to land.

Starmer's team wants us to believe this is the "stable foundation" they promised. But stability can also be another word for stagnation. If you’re standing still in a room that’s slowly filling with water, you’re stable, but you’re still going to drown. The trade-off is clear: the government wants to plug the fiscal hole by squeezing "the broadest shoulders," but those shoulders are the ones currently carrying the weight of the UK's thin-on-the-ground innovation.

There’s a specific kind of arrogance in thinking you can tax your way to growth. You can’t command a tech ecosystem to flourish while simultaneously making it more expensive to hire, more expensive to exit, and more expensive to exist. The £22 billion hole isn’t just a legacy of the previous guys; it’s a millstone around the neck of every policy proposal the new lot brings to the table.

Investment requires certainty. Right now, the only thing anyone is certain of is that it’s going to cost more to do business in the UK tomorrow than it did yesterday. The 0.1% figure is a reprieve, a lucky break that allows the government to claim they haven't broken the machine yet. But a machine that only moves an inch a month isn't much use to anyone.

We’re staring at a budget that promises to "rebuild Britain." It’s a nice sentiment. But if the rebuilding starts with a massive tax bill for the people who actually build things, that 0.1% might start to look like the high-water mark.

The real question isn't whether the economy grew this quarter. It’s whether anyone actually noticed. When the difference between growth and recession is the price of a few flat whites, are we really moving forward, or are we just vibrating in place?