UK households could suffer the biggest annual decline in their living standards since the 1950s as the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushes up global energy prices, experts have warned.
With inflation already at the highest rate for 30 years, analysts said a sustained rise for wholesale oil and gas markets would further add to the squeeze on families from soaring utility bills.
Analysts at Bank of America said that under such a scenario household real income could plunge by 3.1% in 2022 compared with a year earlier, in the biggest annual drop since at least 1956, the year of the Suez crisis.
In what would mark a worse squeeze than during the oil shock of the 1970s, it comes after wholesale European gas prices rocketed on Thursday after Russian tanks rolled over the border in a full-scale invasion.
Although gas prices fell back on Friday on a calmer day for financial markets, analysts warned they remained higher than the start of the week and could surge higher again should tensions between Moscow and the west escalate further.
European stock markets closed higher on Friday with the FTSE…
