Robert Peston

is undoubtedly coming.

I'm afraid it's like you can sort of see, it's not quite a tsunami, but I'm going to use it as a metaphor.

You can see that big wave on the horizon and you're looking out to sea and it's coming towards you.

And that is, as I say, it's not going to be a tsunami.

It's going to be a

are worrying for many people, rising prices, not as devastating, I think, as Putin's war in Ukraine was to our living standards, but it will be significant.

And one of the ways you can see how worried the government is, because I must say, I regarded this as really quite surprising, some would say really shocking, is you know how worried they are when, as they've done today, they have announced that they are easing sanctions on Russian workers.

oil, which is, I mean, just sort of mind boggling.

I mean, Putin is regarded as the great enemy, but because they are worried that airplanes are going to run out of jet fuel and because they're worried that we're going to run out of diesel, they are now allowing British businesses to buy diesel and jet fuel that has been refined out of Russian oil, which is sort of- Yeah, letting the bullies win.

But it shows you how terrified they are.

Could I just before, because I think this mortgage cost issue is really, could I just make one other just very quick important point about where we are economically?

And I have to say where I am is just a bit confused, right?

Because on the one hand,

We saw something that was positive, which was the IMF upgrading a little bit, the growth forecast for this year.

And yet we also saw unemployment figures, which were worse already than we were fearing.

So it is quite difficult to judge whether the economy is sort of weaker or

because of what we're seeing on unemployment, than we hoped it would be, or a bit stronger than we thought it would be.

And that, of course, feeds into what you want to talk about, which is what's going to happen to interest rates and mortgage costs.

Because right now, it is really quite difficult to see whether the biggest overwhelming...

impact of Trump's war is to damage our confidence, economy slowing down, in which case the Bank of England would be barking mad to put up interest rates from where they are now.