Last week, the UK Monetary Policy Committee struck a more hawkish tone, arguing that “some withdrawal of monetary stimulus [was] likely to be appropriate over the coming months”. As a statement of intent, we would not read much into this. Having struggled to rationalise the unexpected weakness in business investment and net trade in the second quarter, the Committee appears to be relying on consumer expenditure being firmer than forecast in order to justify the maintenance of its 0.3% GDP growth estimate for Q3. But data released last week confirmed our suspicion that the consumer squeeze intensified going into the