Michael Simmons

Reprieve! The British consumer has received a stay of execution. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show inflation last month fell to 2.8 per cent – down from 3.3 per cent in March and by more than most economists had forecast. But don’t bother reading the ‘corner has been turned’ press release that the government will issue later, because today’s improvement is sadly not about to become a trend. Rachel Reeves has played some part in these figures: by removing various energy levies from household bills and freezing some other regulated costs. That's meant price rises in April were not as bad as they might otherwise have been. But the real reason the figures have come down is because of how bad Awful April was last year.

This may be barely concealed trauma from my time as a Scottish civil servant but, when I look at Andy Burnham, I see Nicola Sturgeon.  The cultivated public image of Labour’s miracle man in the north is a powerful one. He pulls off the ‘one of us’, ‘man of the people’, ‘our lad done good’ shtick better than most politicians – in spite of his Blairite origins. Sturgeon wielded a similar power. It always surprised me how popular she was with the mums. As long as she said ‘sorry’ occasionally, most people – even those who did not vote for her – were sympathetic and felt she was often unfairly criticised during her nine-year tenure as first minister. Burnham seems to possess some of that voter appeal and, in turn, that political immunity too.

Reality Check verdict: false You know things are hotting up in Westminster when reporters start unironically using the word ‘febrile’. Today, we’re well past febrile. So much so that Westminster turmoil seems to be spilling out into the markets, sending gilt yields (the government borrowing cost) skywards. For one Labour MP though that’s no problem. Speaking on Times Radio yesterday, Paula Barker claimed ‘the markets will have to fall into line’ and that investors would flood to Britain for ‘progressive policies that do speak to our communities’. Reality Check asked one investor for their views of the MPs comments and the response was unprintable.

In a relief for mortgage holders, anyone with a job and the government, the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has voted 8–1 to hold interest rates at 3.75 per cent. That is despite rising inflation thanks to the Iran war, which is likely to hit Britain worse than almost anywhere else. Had it not been for the war and the disruption to energy supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, April was to be the month when the Bank of England finally met its 2 per cent inflation target. Instead, prices are shooting in the wrong direction as energy costs feed through to the wider economy – most notably in fuel.