Hello and welcome to CoffeeHash Shots as best hated daily politics podcast. I'm Katie

Balls and I'm joined by James Hill and Kate Andrews. Kate, we've had some news today on

inflation and it is better news for the government than last month at least.

Oh, it certainly is. Inflation rose to 7.9% on the year last month, which is down from

8.7% on the year in May. And I think critically here, that beat market expectation, which thought

it would still be, the rate would still be over 8%. I should say it's just about in line with the

Bank of England's predictions, actually slightly above. But if it were to be back on track with

the Bank of England's predictions, that would mean that we would start seeing the rate of inflation

fall quite rapidly as the summer plays out and going into the autumn. That is of course a big

if it would mean that the rate has to continue to drop significantly and at a quick pace,

and that has not consistently happened in 2023. But look, I think it is overall good news at food

and the rate of food inflation. I think it is overall good news. The rate at which food prices have

been rising has also slowed down to just above 17% on the year down from that 19% peak. This is

still extraordinarily high, but we are moving in the right direction. Maybe the biggest piece of

good news or the reason to hope is that core inflation also saw a fall in its rate down to 6.9%

on the year in June from 7.1% in May. It was really concerning last month when core inflation,

which excludes more volatile things like energy and food, was still rising as the overall headline

rate of inflation was falling. It is now back to moving in the right direction. So there are

already whispers across Whitehold that perhaps you can make good on that pledge to have inflation

by the end of the year. I think this is all still totally at play. Of course, what the government

really has to do to have inflation is sit back and just not spend money. There isn't so much

you can do in terms of hiking interest rates. That sits with the Bank of England. The question now

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