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Inflation blame game: UK economic woes set government and central bank on a collision course
In January, with one eye on a critical general election in 2024, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowed to halve inflation by the end of the year. At the time, headline consumer price inflation was running at an annual 10.1%. Given that most economists were projecting that this would halve naturally as the shock of soaring energy prices fell away, the pledge seemed like an open goal for Sunak’s Conservative government. Yet headline CPI in May came in at 8.7%, unchanged from the previous month, while core inflation — which excludes volatile energy, food, alcohol and tobacco prices — increased to 7.1%, its highest ... (full story)