Cliff Taylor

They've gone up a bit again.

Brent's kind of around $110, $112 a barrel.

Because this thing is dragging on, there isn't

wide-scale fighting going on between the US and Iran, but nor is there a solution or one apparently in sight.

The Iranians presented a proposal last weekend.

Donald Trump has said he doesn't like it.

It's very hard for us to know what's going on behind the scenes.

Clearly, Trump wants to get this fixed.

He probably wants to get it fixed before he goes to see the Chinese President Xi in the middle of May, ideally, or at least some of the heat taken out of it, because otherwise that meeting could be a bit awkward diplomatically for both sides and it's a really big deal from both of their points of view.

But whether that can happen or not, we don't know.

Iran may have an incentive to continue on blocking the strait.

So there is that risk of oil and gas prices remaining high and going higher.

And who knows how much higher if things did get bad again.

The second...

thing I think to look out for is the kind of spread of inflation through the economy.

So we've had the first hit, if you like, through what we're seeing at the petrol pumps.

They've been problematic, all right.

Yeah, I was just looking at the CSO notes.

So I think it picked up some of them, but not all of them.

So that will be a factor for sure.