Welcome to the new era of high inflation

There was a time when a chancellor would have bitten off the hand of a national statistician who offered him an inflation rate of 6.2 per cent. But that takes us back to the days of Denis Healey and the early months of Geoffrey Howe’s time in Number 11. There is little disguising this morning’s grim news, however. The last time the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) was at 6.2 per cent was in March 1992 – although at that time the index was little used as the government’s preferred measure of inflation was then the Retail Prices Index (RPI).

The worst thing about today’s figure is that it doesn’t even yet include the massive uplift in domestic energy prices coming in April as the price cap is lifted by a whacking 54 per cent from £1,277 to £1,971 for an average dual fuel bill. Nor does it yet fully reflect the surge in petrol and diesel prices following the invasion of Ukraine.