One of the UK’s core selling points has always been its commercial geography — between North America and continental Europe. But, at the moment, it is getting the worst of both worlds. As Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England governor, warned last week, the UK economy is “weakening rather earlier and somewhat more than others”. The country will face “a further step-up” in inflation later this year — and its prices problem will have “more persistence”. Like the US, Britain had a strong post-Covid surge. But two years of pent-up demand and changed tastes were unleashed on an economy that proved unable to satisfy them. This fuelled rapid growth, but the mismatch between supply and demand also generated inflationary heat.

From Europe, the UK has imported exposure to a particularly nasty energy price shock, largely caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Consumer price inflation rose by 9.1 per cent in the year to May. Much of that was driven by a surge in household costs and transport — or, put another way: gas, electricity and petrol. But high UK inflation has been broadening to most goods and services. The BoE thinks inflation has now taken root in corporate psychology.

There are also some specifically British phenomena: the energy regulation system — which includes caps on consumer tariffs — means the full impact of energy price rises is not yet actually being felt by households. The same system will inject a further dose of price increases in October, prolonging the period of inflationary pressure.