Charles Dickens entitled his classic novel about Victorian Britain’s decrepit legal system, Bleak House.

Were he writing today, a reader might be forgiven for assuming he was referring to the country’s tottering economy.

Economists are sounding a grim alarm that Her Majesty's Kingdom, the world's fifth largest economy, is tilting towards a US-style recession. The latest economic data point to deepening gloom and doom as Britons begin to pay for the price for taking one too many pages from the American economic playbook.

After more than a decade and a half of relentless upward momentum, Britain's economy is being yanked back down to earth. Growth for the first quarter has been revised down to an anaemic 0.3%, while inflation is at 3.3% and edging higher. Consumer confidence is at a near two-decade low.

In its latest issue, Britain’s Economist newsweekly paints a dire scenario. “Britain’s sinking economy,” runs an editorial headline. It traces the worst of the damage to two main sectors of the economy.

One is housing. Britons fell prey to the same property mania that we witnessed in America's housing boom. But they took it to an even higher level of frenzy, fueling a boom that saw house prices surge by 140% over ten years through early 2007, according to the Economist. Home loan approvals, meanwhile, plunged 64% in May from a year earlier.

As credit dries up and inflation bites, house prices are plunging. They fell for an eighth straight month in June and are down 6.3% on the year.

Britons are reaping the whirlwind of easy credit. British households, the Economist notes, are more indebted than any other in the G7 group of the world’s most developed countries.

The Economist’s second soft spot is retailing. Marks & Spencer's, the iconic retailer that sells everything from bras to broccoli, has seen its sales take a hit, easing more than 5% in the first quarter. Activity in the country's services sector is at its lowest level since the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States, reports The Daily Telegraph, citing new data from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply.

And finally, credit conditions are also worsening. The Bank of England reports that businesses are becoming ever more picky in their lending – a trend that economists say is likely to continue in the near term.

The slowing economy is making life tough for Bank of England head Mervyn King. He's expected to keep rates on hold next week at 5% as he tries to balance the vying forces of sclerotic growth and rising inflation.

Things could get bleaker in Blighty before the fog finally clears.