Five. All this censorship and treating people with contempt, far from protecting Europe from sliding towards extremes, is actually driving that embrace at the far right.

Four. I don't like being dismal, but I'd rather be dismal than wrong. And it strikes me that we're looking at

four percent inflation this autumn. If we were to record data on who the perpetrators of

rape, sexual assaults were in the United Kingdom, what we'd find would be so utterly astonishing,

so flabbergasting that it would always be unpublishable.

But we thought we'd have a new photo taken with our new spelt selves, didn't we?

Welcome once again to Planet Normal, the Telegraph podcast with Alison Pearson.

Hello.

And me, Liam Halligan.

UK inflation surged to 3% during the year to January, Alison, up from 2.5% in December.

That's the fastest pace of rising prices for 10 months and well above the Bank of England's 2% target.

This, I'm afraid, is bad economic news, an ongoing cost of living squeeze, which means we're

unlikely to see further interest rate cuts from our central bank anytime soon. That will stymie

consumer spending and investment, slowing down the housing market and casting yet

another shadow over the stalling UK economy. Chancellor Rachel Reeves claims this surge in CPI

or consumer price index inflation is due to rising food and energy costs. But the more technical

core inflation measure, which excludes food and energy, soared to 3.7% last month,

way more than the headline CPI measure, up from 3.2% in December.

An inflation across the service sector accounting for four-fifths of our economy hit 5% in January,

compared to 4.4% a month earlier.

This is what happens when you put up taxes on business, which in turn feed into firms' costs

and therefore consumer prices.

...