While predators roam the stinking swamp that is the swimming pool of our metropolitan elite, the rest of the country gets on with life. As I stand at King's Cross station in London, I see the multitude of good-natured people, with happy dispositions, going about their business purchasing, eating, travelling. In London there are sure signs of economic vibrancy. People on Oxford Street are carrying shopping bags. Tourists clog up the avenues spilling out of the buzzing hotels and at every turn there are construction cranes all through the City, the West End and beyond.

This all confirms the latest economic growth figures which indicate that Britain is at the head of the G7 growth index and that we are third only to the USA and Japan in cumulative growth per capita. All good you might think, but it is thin gruel and the Labour Government has the capacity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The prosperity of London is not reflected in the rest of the country.

The growth figures point to this as, by contrast with services, manufacturing is practically flatlining, largely as a consequence of the super-high energy costs driven by Labour’s insane Net Zero policies. This collapse is not outweighed by its multimillionaire cheerleaders making a mint out of taxpayer and consumer-funded green subsidies.

British industry is being destroyed by mad Ed Miliband’s ideological pursuit of a vacuous mission to be the biggest virtue-signaller in the world while production, jobs and pollution are exported to China, India and the USA, among others. Not only is this making us all poorer, it is also a threat to national security and, in particular, it is impoverishing the regions increasingly dependent on taxpayer-funded welfare.

The workers of the regions don’t want or need welfare, they want wealth and dignity. Labour are denying them this. They are not the party of workers but instead of welfare.

And these first quarter growth figures are just that. The previous two years have seen falling growth rates, the Chancellor having at first inherited a no1 position from the previous government only to destroy it. Stronger growth in the first quarter has been the norm throughout this Labour regime, despite its growth-destroying policies.

But let us hope the next quarter bucks that trend and we get growth in the second too. Of course, much to the Chancellor’s dismay I dare say, I need to share with her that hope is not a strategy.

Another interesting lesson of the first quarter figures is that the G7 countries doing the best on growth are those not in the EU, while those that are the laggards are bloc members.

So why would anyone want to attach to these failing economies and have no greater ambition for prosperity than they do? Why would anybody want to give up self-determination and instead be ruled by unelected bureaucrats and a majority of member states which we can neither outvote nor veto?

Which brings us to the snakes in Labour's corner of the swamp. The two greatest homegrown threats right now to economic growth are Net Zero madness and a suplplicant relationship with the EU.

All of the potential Labour Party leaders have made noises that should worry us on both fronts. The greatest problem for an electorate who want the current government out of office is that the alternatives to Starmer are no better or worse.

Mr Milliband’s totalitarian obsession with climate change reflects a frighteningly Stalinist approach to power. I have personal experience of Mr Milliband.

On all the occasions I, as DG of the British Chambers of Commerce, briefed Milliband on business and the economy he clearly had no knowledge and no interest, as if these things were entirely driven by central planning, state control and a magic money tree. He did once pay me a public compliment saying that I spoke truth to power without fear or favour. Right now my truth to power is: “Mr Milliband, please do not become Prime Minister”.

Andy Burnham, meanwhile, is a vacuous and weak man, which in turn makes him dangerous. Wes Streeting was proved incapable of organising a coup. If he can't organise the proverbial p***-up in a brewery what chance has he of running a sovereign country?

Talking of breweries, there is also Angela Rayner. Qualified in nothing, with no relevant experience other than a hardly unique life story (I was brought up in terraced house next-door-but-one to a mill in Bolton). How could she possibly be expected to run the country? It would be cruel, laregly to her!

The UK has almost forgotten how to be a serious country, partly infantilised by being a county council of the EU autocracy for decades. We are a significant but shrinking economy let down by bad government policies and weak leadership. Our wealth is slipping away.

We can turn this around as a “re-emerging” nation. Strong economic growth would change everything. Powerful armed forces with a nuclear deterrent, a truly independent Britain can stand alone.

Trading with everyone, with alliances of convenience for the time being and with a preference for the King’s realms, we would have a bright future. But only once this circus of clowns have been removed from office.

John Longworth is an entrepreneur and businessman, Chairman of the Independent Business Network of family businesses and a former MEP