John Stepek

And I do think the biggest problem the UK has is the headwind from bad governance.

And it's been like that for a long time.

It's not just Labour's fault, but Labour have certainly kind of raised it to, you know, they're as bad as the previous lot, at least.

And so, you know, we've got, I mean, if you look at the PMIs came out today, so they're snapshots of activity and services and manufacturing industries, much, much better than expected.

And these are for April.

Now, part of that is probably, you know,

companies kind of stocking up ahead knowing that things are going pear-shaped in the middle east but the point is that none of these economic figures by themselves or and certainly not taken together point to an economy that is in like massive distress

But the sentiment indicators are just off the charts bad.

We saw an Ipsos consumer confidence reading yesterday that shows that people are gloomier than they were ahead of 2008 and in 1979 of all times.

So there's a bit of a weird disconnect which I think is probably driven by people hating inflation.

I think inflation is probably the big driver of most people's misery because everyone feels poorer and feels that they're being ripped off and doesn't see things getting any better.

But yeah, the underlying economy is not too bad.

I think the big risk is that if interest rates stay where they are or even go up a bit because of the energy crisis...

that we're probably facing, then that will knock a lot of that on its head, particularly things like the housing market and the wealth effect from that.

Well, yeah, and you see all these news stories in the papers at the moment about people saying, oh, I can't sell my, you know, XYZ house for this price.

And obviously the solution is, well, cut the price.

But the problem is people have spent so long.

Yeah, but people have spent so long thinking that their house is worth X. And the other thing is when you look at the prices from when they bought them, and this goes back to what we talked about the other day, they haven't actually made any money in real terms even.

No.

if they get to sell them for the prices that they can't sell them for.