The hobbling British economy boasted two straight months of retail sales increases, the first time Blighty has managed such a feat since July 2012. (Although the 0.2% month-on-month gain was slightly less than the 0.3% that economists polled by Bloomberg had expected.)
Barclays analysts note that increases in nominal retail sales—the amount of money spent in stores— in recent years have outpaced the actual volumes of sales by about 12% since early 2008. That illustrates “the extent to which high inflation in the UK has damaged consumer spending,” they wrote.