Everything in the garden is wonderful, more or less

More confirmation that the UK economy is on the road to recovery:

The International Monetary Fund has raised its forecast for Britain's economic growth rate for the second time this year.

The Washington-based organisation said Britain would maintain its status as one of the world's fastest expanding major economies following a surge in growth to 3.2% by the end of the year.

The lender of last resort, which is headed by former French finance minister Christine Lagarde, uprated the UK's outlook for GDP growth by 0.4 percentage points this year and 0.2 percentage points to 2.7% next year in its latest world economic outlook.

(Not that the IMF is any better at economic prediction than anyone else.)  But still, taken together with the employment figures, things are looking reasonably rosy.  The only fly in the ointment is the failure of income figures to match inflation.

This being so, one might expect Slasher Osborne and his Tory confreres to be celebrating a recovery in the opinion polls.  On the contrary, however, Labour is maintaining a small but substantial lead of 3 to 4 percentage points, more than enough to deliver an overall majority in next year's election

Time is getting short.  Will the Tories start to panic?