Behind the fog of pre-election claims and counter claims about the state of the economy the consumer economy has generally continued to improve.

The Misery Index (compiled by adding unemployment to the rate of inflation, see below) is now at its lowest ever level, and similarly the more commonly quoted consumer confidence data is pointing to a spring in the step of the UK shopper, despite a slight dip this month in shopper's attitudes towards now being the time to consider a major purchase.

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^{Source: ONS / Savills Research}

While retail sales dipped unexpectedly in March, primarily due to a fall in fuel sales, the volume, excluding fuel, rose by 0.2% month-on-month, and 2% quarter-on-quarter. Of course, a lot of this strong spending growth is being driven by heavy discounting across both the food and comparison goods sectors and this is by no means a sustainable strategy for retailers.

Ultimately the key metric for us this quarter remains the fact that the "noflation" is providing a substantial boost to household's spending power, and there is no sign that good price deflation is becoming bad deflation where households start to defer spending in the expectation of lower prices next month.

The low level of inflation, whether it is marginally positive or marginally negative, is very important in the current environment where earnings growth remains weak. Indeed, despite a further drop in unemployment, average weekly pay only rose by 1.3% in the year to February, well down on the levels seen at the back end of 2014.

We are pretty sanguine about the impact of the election on consumer spending and retail sales. Indeed, there is some good evidence that some areas of the retail world benefit from election ennui, with cinema attendance for example up 20% in the two months prior to the 2010 election. Electoral decisions are always presented as overly binary, we suspect that whatever the result the consumer recovery will remain on track.