In his sublime 1997 book on the fate of the fishing boat Andrea Gale, the author Sebastian Junger defined a “perfect storm” as a rare combination of events or circumstances that results in an unusually bad situation.
This term would not be out of place in describing what is currently happening to the UK economy which is being battered on so many fronts with little respite in sight
For example, the war in Ukraine has had an unexpected impact on energy bills in Europe due to the curtailing of exports from Russia which, last year, was responsible for supplying 40% of all natural gas to the European Union.
