The last week has seen some welcome reassurance on a couple of quite different fronts.

Royal Bank of Scotland’s latest growth tracker report highlighted a rebound in the expansion rate of the private sector economy north of the Border in July, and good progress on several other key measures, after an unexpected sharp slowdown in expansion in June.

And a trading update from TUI provided some welcome confirmation that the UK’s overseas travel sector continues to enjoy strong demand, even though the macroeconomic backdrop is dismal and there is little room for hope of significantly better times ahead in spite of Labour’s spin on this front.

The package holiday giant and airline reported its highest-ever revenues for any April to June period, the third quarter of its financial year. Revenues for the quarter were 5.8 billion euros, up by 9.5% on the same period a year earlier.

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TUI declared bookings taken for summer 2024 had strengthened since its last update in May, “supported by accelerated momentum in recent weeks at robust prices”.

It added that, following the sale of 88% of the season, bookings are up 6%, with the average selling price also ahead, by 3%.

And TUI revealed “early signs for winter 2024/25 bookings are promising across our source markets”.

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TUI reported that it had, since its last update in May, added 4.3 million bookings, achieving a total of 13.3 million for the season to date.

It revealed that “the UK is 90% sold for the season with bookings up 5%”.

Andy Cliffe, chief executive of Glasgow Airport owner AGS, has made much of the importance of rebuilding connectivity in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and highlighted how crucial this is to the regional economy.

He is absolutely right to do so.

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And the indication from TUI that consumers are continuing to prioritise overseas travel, even in these tough times, is good news in this context.

There have been many other encouraging signs, including the buoyancy of demand for Emirates’ route between Glasgow and Dubai, a key hub for myriad long-haul destinations.

Returning to the Scottish economy, the acceleration of private sector growth in July saw the nation ranked fifth among the 12 UK nations and regions in Royal Bank’s growth tracker last week.

This closely watched survey also revealed that the private sector economy in Scotland last month enjoyed an acceleration in employment growth and a rise in optimism in terms of expectations of increased activity on a 12-month horizon. The private sector economy north of the Border also recorded a renewed upturn in new business inflows.

The headline business activity index for Scotland, which measures combined services and manufacturing output, rose to 52.7 last month from 51.9 in June on a seasonally adjusted basis, coming in above the level of 50 deemed to separate expansion from contraction for a seventh consecutive month.

As observed in my column in The Herald last Wednesday, Scotland’s economy is not firing on all cylinders, with the expansion in July driven again by the dominant services sector as manufacturing output fell again.

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However, given the sharpness of the slowdown in June, the latest growth tracker findings were most welcome, especially given the aforementioned difficult UK economic backdrop.

Separately last week, the EY ITEM Club think tank more than doubled its forecast of growth in Scotland this year from the 0.4% it had projected a quarter ago to 0.9%.

EY said that “Scotland’s economic recovery is gaining momentum, suggesting fertile conditions for growth, but pace remains anaemic”.

The EY ITEM Club’s latest expansion projection for Scotland trails its forecast of 1.1% growth in the UK as a whole this year.

However, in reality, this difference of 0.2 percentage points is not great. And, as the scale of the upward revision to the Scottish growth forecast for this year shows, things can change fairly quickly.

The key thing that can be taken from the EY ITEM Club forecasts is that growth in the UK as a whole is expected to be weak again this year.

It is a demoralising state of affairs.

My column last Wednesday observed: “Labour, while its attempt to boost housebuilding and its plan to improve employment rights after so many years of Tory rule are both welcome, has not come up with anything that would suggest it can deliver a meaningful boost to UK growth. In fact, it has hemmed itself in on two key fronts.

“It has shunned rejoining the European single market, something that would if it were achieved provide an enormous boost to growth. Labour has also pledged to stick to the Tory fiscal rules, limiting its capacity to stimulate growth through investment and thereby boost tax revenues.”

Given the size of Labour’s lead in the polls ahead of the July 4 General Election, and the dire performance by the Conservatives between them taking power in 2010 and losing it this summer, it remains truly baffling why Sir Keir Starmer and his new Government felt they had to weigh themselves down with these two huge Tory millstones.