The bank holidays to celebrate the Queen’s jubilee may push the UK towards a recession but should prove a bonanza for Britain’s supermarkets.
Bloomberg, the news agency, is the source of the possibly treasonous assertion that celebrating “our madge’s” platinum jubilee could shave half a point off gross domestic product (GDP) in the second quarter if previous bank holidays are any sort of guide.
In conjunction with reduced output from the healthcare sector as the government’s COVID-19 test and track programme winds down, the holiday could lead to GDP falling 0.4% in the second quarter, according to a business intelligence forecast by economist Dan Hanson.
One definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of shrinking GDP, so the UK would have to recover quickly in the third quarter from the hangover and a long weekend of porking out and that may be difficult given the belly-busting amounts of food and drink the supermarkets are expected to sell ahead of the celebration.
According to the market research group Kantar, UK supermarkets saw a 10% boost in sales in the week leading up to Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012, and so a similar boost is expected this time around.
“We should never underestimate the appetite for a party, especially a royal one," said Fraser McKevitt, Kantar's head of retail and consumer insight, according to the Reuters news agency.
Whilst the Platinum Jubilee weekend will no doubt provide a boost to leisure businesses, it will inevitably drag in consumer spend from the weekends either side - so it's difficult to view it as a 'pure' consumer spend boost
— James Brumby (@JamesAtLangton) May 31, 2022
Apparently, the monarch’s favourite “tipple” is Dubonnet – and not, as republicans would have it, the salty tears of her subjects – and sales of the French wine-based aperitif are reportedly up 50% year-on-year.
It’s not a particularly patriotic choice of tipple but so long as she uses it to wash down a Melton Mowbray pork pie, she’ll probably get away with it.