London
Raining on Sunak’s parade: One of the wettest Aprils in more than a decade kept shoppers away from the high street, says Mehreen Khan in The Times. That dampened economic growth, which was flat month on month, down from 0.4% in March, with retail sales volumes falling 2.3%. This, the last GDP reading before the general election next month, will come as a disappointment to prime minister Rishi Sunak, who is campaigning on the economy having “turned a corner”.
Still, the economy has performed better than expected so far this year. That, combined with the “stickiness of wage growth”, which grew 6% in the three months to April year on year, excluding bonuses, creates “a lingering concern for the Bank of England (BoE)”, says Ruth Gregory of Capital Economics.
Thanks to slack in the labour market, that “stickiness… may not stop the BoE from cutting… rates for the first time in August”. That’s just as well as the global rate-cutting cycle has begun – the European Central Bank trimmed rates last week, says economist Julian Jessop in
