ALEX BRUMMER: Ignore the gloomsters! Here are 10 reasons to be cheerful

If a Martian had landed on planet Earth on any day this past year, they would surely have concluded that Britain was done for.

Almost everywhere you looked, some doomsayer was claiming that consumers had been crushed by a cost-of-living crisis and that the Tories had crashed the economy.

And yesterday's news that Britain's gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the health of the economy, shrank by 0.1 percent between July and September, after estimates suggested growth was flat, only served to cheer the gloom. more ammo.

But the truth is, there are several reasons to be cheerful.

Earlier this week, the latest official data showed inflation is easing – unexpectedly falling from 4.6 per cent in October to 3.9 per cent last month, a rate well ahead of Rishi Sunak's pledge in January to bring inflation down by halved by the end of the year.

And despite the gloomy rhetoric from Labor and their fellow travelers, the UK service economy – with leading players in sectors from AI to IT and biotech to finance – is far better placed to thrive than many of our competitors.

But Sunak and his chancellor Jeremy Hunt, beset by constant small-boat setbacks and the Rwanda plan, have so far failed miserably to highlight their many achievements.

As the country moves into election territory this new year, here are ten key messages that need to be shouted from the rooftops. . .

1 Although the Bank of England has raised interest rates fourteen times since November 2022, it has not crushed Britain's resilience.

With our great rival Germany's output still below pre-war levels in Ukraine and the economy languishing, by most measures, in recession territory, Britain is defying the forecasters and business and consumer confidence surveys are in December optimistic.

Even the housing market refuses to die – despite a rise in costs for first-time buyers and fixed-rate homeowners looking to refinance.

2 The world discovered AI, artificial intelligence, in 2023, but Britain got there first. Britain's DeepMind, a pioneer in creating machines programmed to think and act like humans, was so impressed when it beat the Korean champions at the strategy board game Go in 2019 that it was picked up by Google owner Alphabet .

British business is also an early adopter, with data, cyber and communications giant Relx Group – which uses AI to mine legal and medical resources – now one of our most valuable companies.

Then there's Cambridge-based Arm Holdings. It may be quoted in New York, but the brains behind the clever AI-enhanced chip design are in Britain.

AI, properly regulated, will give Britain a competitive advantage in the race to increase productivity.

3 The financial services sector is a goldmine and remains intact despite President Macron's attempts to lure bankers to Paris. It employs 1.2 million people in the UK, generates £278 billion in revenue and contributes £100 billion in taxes, a huge amount that supports all kinds of public services.

When the world's largest bank, JP Morgan, decided to make a big bet on the European retail banking market two years ago, it chose London as a beachhead and established the headquarters of its digital bank Chase UK in Canary Wharf.

Britain is home to a financial technology revolution, with online start-ups such as Monzo and Revolut, and money transfer company Wise, transforming the way Generation Z manages their finances.

4 British scientific research is not only leading in Europe, but also leading the way with the US. We have four universities in the global top 20 – Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and University College, London – while the EU has precisely none.

And biotechnology and Big Pharma can be sources of prosperity for generations to come.

AstraZeneca, which gave us one of the first Covid-19 vaccines, is the world leader in new immunological treatments for cancer and has become Britain's most valuable company.

Meanwhile, in Britain, GlaxoSmithKline has pioneered vaccines against shingles and respiratory diseases worth billions of pounds a year.

5 When Boris Johnson extolled the virtues of the wildly popular children's cartoon hero Peppa Pig at the 2021 CBI conference, he was widely mocked. Yet he was right about the money.

Our creative sector is an unsung treasure, contributing up to 10 percent of national output. Britain is a film and video powerhouse that entertains the world, with brilliant productions from Sky, BBC and ITV Studios, while JK Rowling's fantastic production is a cottage industry in itself.

Meanwhile, London has more live theater than anywhere else in the world, surpassing New York several times over.

6 The world loves British business services. The rule of law has made London a legal centre. It is also home to brilliant accounting, consulting, engineering and architectural practices.

The latest data from the OECD shows that Britain recorded 'a marked increase in services exports and imports (2.9 percent and 3.7 percent), driven by dynamic trade in business services'.

7 The Premier League gets bad press for its petulant, overpaid footballers, abusive referees and the chaos that followed the introduction of VAR, but it is one of our biggest exports, especially to Asia and North America.

The latest British broadcast contract, worth a record £6.7 billion, shows that the club is still in poor health and explains why clubs are seen as such valuable assets by Middle Eastern wealth funds.

8 At a time of geopolitical turmoil from the Urals to the Middle East, the defense and space sectors have rarely been more important and Britain is a world leader.

Our defense champion BAE Systems has just won a huge new weapons contract from the Pentagon and as a result is on its biggest order book ever, worth £66 billion.

British technology companies are also helping Germany and Japan build their defense capabilities and we are playing a key role in the development of the new Typhoon Eurofighter, which is in high demand from countries around the world. In the civil sector, Rolls-Royce engines power the wide-body aircraft that are in such high demand in Asia.

9 Post-Brexit, the Tories have wasted no time in signing trade deals linking Britain to the fastest growing economies in the Pacific. Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch was instrumental in forging Britain's entry into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) – the Indo-Pacific trading bloc now worth £12 trillion in GDP and, while a free trade deal with the US is still hostage to Joe Biden, but that doesn't stop the US from being our largest commercial partner.

10 Finally, who could forget Britain's scintillating achievements in music and gaming? Adele and Stormzy are our quirky answer to Taylor Swift and newer artists like rapper Central Cee are reaching a global reach. Meanwhile, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones have never lost their appeal.

When it comes to gaming, Dundee may be best known as the home of cake and the Beano, but its biggest export is the Grand Theft Auto family of games that top the world's rankings.

Denigrating Britain is seen as good sport in some parts of the media, on the opposition benches and among locals. But as leading urban economist Simon French noted after the latest inflation data. The critics “look a little weird.” It's hard not to agree.