Tough summer ahead for retailers as UK consumer confidence hits rock bottom

Analysis: Shoppers will be counting their pennies, with inflation predicted to hit 11%

• Retail sales fall as Britons cut back on food spending

With consumer confidence at rock-bottom levels, it hardly comes as a shock that retailers in Great Britain had a tough month in May. The real surprise was that the 0.5% drop in the volume of spending was not worse.

The monthly survey of how UK consumers are feeling from the data company GfK stretches back to 1974 and so includes some previous periods when times have been hard: the manufacturing wipeout of the early 1980s, the housing crash of the early 1990s, and the global financial crisis of 2008 among them. In all that time, consumers have never been as gloomy as they are now.