The main slogan of the Conservative Party during the 1997 general election campaign has been ‘Britain is booming: don't let Labour blow it’. In our analysis of the UK economy, we discuss the extent to which Britain is indeed booming and how we expect it to develop once the election is over. Given their lead in the opinion polls, we have assumed that Labour will win the election and have built some of their policies into the forecast. This therefore provides some means of assessing whether Labour will ‘blow it’, although this will obviously depend on how they actually behave in office.