For UK economic policy-makers, 2022 will be the year of Hobson’s choice. Out of apparently multiple possibilities of actions, only one (however unpalatable) is actually available. Boris Johnson’s luckless-looking government may run into a slogan Margaret Thatcher made popular 40 years ago – Tina: ‘There is no alternative’. The truth is unfortunate. A recession is inevitable. It’s only a question of time. As I have consistently argued over the past two years in successive articles pointing to the inflationary legacy of Covid-19, ‘cost-push’ is now the UK’s highly infectious dominant inflation strain. Fuelled by ... (full story)