One of the most remarkable things about Britain’s economy in recent years has been its ability to keep growing. Through thick and thin, even at times when the battery threatened to give up entirely, the long expansion has continued.

Millions of children have never known anything other than rising national income. Today’s 16-year-olds were emerging blinking into the sunlight last time real gross domestic product showed a single quarterly fall.

Now, however, after 63 consecutive quarters of growth, is the party over? There have been close calls along the way — in the spring quarter of 2001 GDP rose a mere 0.1% in spite of a big public spending boost — but avoiding at least a quarter of falling GDP looks like an enormous challenge.

How much of a challenge has only just become clear. It started with the downward revision of first-quarter growth to 0.3%, half its rate in the final quarter of 2007 and a third of its rate a year earlier.

The quarterly numbers suggested a sharper slowdown than had been thought. They were followed by a series of very weak survey numbers and some high-profile corporate woe. With half the year gone, the gloom threatens to become all-enveloping. Will we even get to the end of the year with the growth record intact?

The question is, where will the growth come from? In a clutch of nasty numbers last week, some of the nastiest were the purchasing managers’ surveys.

The survey for manufacturing reported that, with continuing price pressures, the index recorded its largest monthly decline since January 2000 and was at its weakest since December 2001, with output, new orders and employment all declining.

You may say we have become used to gloom from Britain’s factories over the years. This year, though, it was supposed to be different, with the economy “rebalancing” towards Britain’s factories, helped by sterling’s fall against the euro.

Instead, manufacturing appears to be suffering from the credit crunch and soaring commodity prices along with the rest of the economy. The Engineering Employers’ Federation said the survey may have overstated the gloom. However, hopes that industry would keep the rest of the economy afloat are fading.

If manufacturing is disappointing, construction is looking like a demolition site. The purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for construction dropped to 38.8 last month. Last summer it was running at 64.8. The housebuilders’ intense pain is being reflected in the numbers.

Bad news comes in threes, and the third was the PMI for services, the biggest contributor to economic activity. We know financial services are in trouble — you certainly would not want to be a mortgage broker these days — and the sector’s woes are serious enough to push overall service activity down; to 47.1 from 49.8.

The service sector, of course, includes retailing and last week we had a 21-gun warning from Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of Marks & Spencer. We heard much the same from him in early January, since when consumer spending has surprised on the upside, including that spectacular, though disputed, 3.5% jump in retail sales in May. If you believe the official numbers, sales volume in May was up 8% on a year earlier. Even if you take them with a large pinch of salt, Rose’s retailing recession must have started after May.

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