 Good morning to you. British shoppers unexpectedly cutting back on their spending in January, this as retail prices rose close to 2% in the month compared to a year ago. Is this mark the strongest sign we've got to date that the country's economy is heading for some sort of a post-Brexit slowdown? Yeah good morning, Dean. I think that's certainly the case. I mean the data that we've seen out of the UK has been consistently a lot better than people have expected across the board. So this is you know quite unusual. I think the December retail sales figures as well in the UK were also weak as well. So I think it does kind of bode well for you know the people that have been following Mark Carney and the Bank of England's warnings about Brexit and what that actually means. It's you know it takes time for it to feed through if you think you know the vote happened in June last year. We're kind of just now potentially starting to see signs of some weakness. And we hear from Carney this week don't we? That's right. Yeah so I think you'll probably get a bit more collar in terms of you know his thoughts in the Bank of England's positioning but I think you know if the data continues it's certainly going to make them feel a lot more dovish and a lot more likely to keep interest rates lower for longer to try to you know get the economy through this transition period. Because as you rightly point out you are seeing significant increases in price of insurance over there and in terms of goods as well as you know the devaluation does take an impact in terms of the producer prices and gate prices that you're seeing over there. So you'd start to see a bit of that come through in terms of CPI as well. So you know purchasing power of people is also deteriorating so it's going to be really key data for the UK going forward this week. It's interesting we had former Prime Minister Tony Blair out speaking over the weekend saying that he is going to spend the bulk of his time trying to convince Britons that they can you know change their mind essentially when it comes to Brexit that the country still doesn't have to go down that path necessarily. I mean if people if average Britons start to see their prices rise if they start to feel some pain in their hip pocket do you think there's any chance that that the country could essentially change its mind as Tony Blair seems to imply? My view is I still think it's very very unlike that the UK does leave the EU. I know Theresa May is still pushing for that March the 30th deadline to trigger article 50 but I still think that you know the average person in the UK you know woke up on that Friday morning after the vote with regret that it was a protest vote the people I've been speaking to it was a protest vote against immigration and the EU bureaucracy and they didn't think that it was actually going to happen. If they were to hold the referendum again I am pretty sure that you would get a different result and the whole issue would be taken away however the UK government has said that the UK people have voted and they are going to follow through on that and that means a hard Brexit but you know as you say if more and more people see the economic disadvantages of leaving and start to see pain where it counts in their take-home pay in their spending power then I think more and more people will look to potentially change their view. I think it's actually quite fortunate that Tony Blair the ex-labour leader and Prime Minister has taken this as his mission to try to change people's minds it's kind of a kind of a get out of jail free for the Conservative Party in terms of they can kind of Tony Blair can fly the flag and see what happens in terms of that regard in terms of how popular that the this would be but at the moment you know the UK government is still committed to triggering article 50. It's an interesting one a bit of buyer's regret perhaps will take hold and I wonder if you can draw a line between that if you can draw a line between some of the disappointments that is happening around the globe when it comes to some of Donald Trump's more extreme I suppose in some ways actions in the first 20 days or whatever it is of his presidency and the European elections that are coming up when it comes to the Netherlands when it comes to France that perhaps if we continue to see I guess some of the negative aspects of Trump coming through that it could actually sour some of that sentiment towards some of these more extreme parties in Europe. That's right and you know again you're seeing political turmoil you know away from those elections that you mentioned away from Greece and away from the Italian banks you've seen over the weekend the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renz is resigned from his party so they're going to have to have new elections there for his party he'll he'll stand for re-election that's probably likely to be in April May he couldn't get the minority sections of his party to unite behind him and then also in France as well over the weekend you had you know kind of accusations flying about potential you know funding misappropriation Marie Le Pen the national front the far right candidate you know has become embroiled by saying that she had friends working for the EU friend kind of jobs for friends and she's denied that there was also talk that maybe the the left would unite and that would form a credible threat to the polls however you know given the conversations between the socialist candidate and the far left candidate that seems unlikely so there's a lot of changing dynamics but it's quite strange but as you mentioned there's a lot of political uncertainty a lot of geopolitical uncertainty but you are not seeing that manifest itself at all in the equity markets which continue to kind of bounce up to new record highs almost every day and you're not seeing that in the volatility of this of the share market you're seeing a bit of that caution come through again on Friday in government bond yields the bunds 10 year yield and also the 10 year US Treasury did fall which is kind of counter intuitive given you had a very strong leading indicator read from the from the US and generally positive kind of US data as well which would typically send the the yields higher so I think it was a bit of caution coming across on the bond side of things but in the equity markets you know it's kind of forget the geopolitical uncertainty forget the uncertainty about Trump and in fact you know he's hoping that we'll get some further fiscal spending details from Trump this week or next because it's gonna have to start to highlight those else the markets gonna start to lose faith that he's got any plans at all in that in that space interesting times mark and we'll have to leave it there for now but we'll talk soon about how this is all manifesting itself in the global bond markets thank you have a good day thanks Nadine have a good one