THE sometimes bafflingly impassioned debate over the price of Marmite, arising from sterling’s Brexit vote-induced plunge, may have provided light relief in recent weeks but what is happening on the inflation front is certainly no laughing matter.

The pain of the UK electorate’s June 23 vote to leave the European Union is already being felt at the pumps, with petrol prices having surged on the back of the pound’s weakness. This misery looks likely to continue.

And technology giant Apple last week unveiled price hikes in the UK, broadly in line with sterling’s tumble against the dollar since the Brexit vote.

Not caring one way or another about Marmite, it has been impossible to get excited about arguments over the price of this viscous liquid.

However, it is very interesting to observe the general controversy over increases in the cost of food, and of other goods and services, arising from sterling’s tumble in the wake of the Brexit vote. What is entirely baffling in this context is anger in some quarters that prices of imported goods and services are going up.

It is difficult to know if this annoyance is greater among the pro-Brexit camp but you get the feeling it might be, perhaps reflecting a belief among some that the people of Mighty Blighty should not have to put up with paying more for imports. That they can just buy British instead. Good luck with that, in these days of globalisation.

Of course people in the UK, regardless of their views on Brexit, must now put up with rises in import prices. The transmission process is simple. If the pound is weak, imports cost more in sterling terms. In the same way as the money of UK holidaymakers is going a lot less far in other countries since the Brexit vote.

David Bell, professor of economics at the University of Stirling, warned last month that the pound’s weakness “makes us all poorer”. This is a simple, and inescapable, truth.

The pound enjoyed a rare bounce yesterday, after the High Court ruled Parliament must have its say on whether the UK can trigger Article 50 and start the process to leave the EU.

It says a great deal about the fears associated with leaving the EU that the UK Government’s defeat in a court battle over a key constitutional issue pushed the pound up, rather than down. The Government emphasised it would appeal to the Supreme Court.

While the pound might have enjoyed some relief yesterday, trading up 1.4 cents on the session at around $1.2454 at 5pm, it is way adrift of the near-$1.50 levels at which it traded on June 23, ahead of the referendum result.

Sterling is much, much weaker against a raft of currencies, including the euro, because of the Brexit vote.

It is bad enough that sterling’s sharp fall is already making us all poorer, with matters only likely to get worse on this front as more and more exchange rate-induced price rises feed their way through the system.

However, it is worse than that.

In a macroeconomic context, the alarm bells are ringing loudly.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, an independent think-tank, this week predicted annual UK consumer prices index (CPI) inflation, which was one per cent in September, would “accelerate rapidly” to around four per cent in the second half of 2017, only returning to the Bank of England’s two per cent target in 2020.

And the unappetising UK economic outlook was underlined yesterday by the Bank of England, as it held base rates at a record low of 0.25 per cent and hiked its inflation forecasts.

The prospect of surging inflation is also a major barrier to the Bank if it wants to cut UK base rates further as economic growth slows against the backdrop of huge Brexit-related uncertainty, including worries over future trade arrangements.

The Bank of England has raised its forecast of annual UK CPI inflation in the fourth quarter of next year to 2.7 per cent, from the two per cent it predicted back in August. The new projection is well above the two per cent target set by the Treasury. The Bank also now expects annual CPI inflation of 2.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2018, having forecast 2.4 per cent previously.

And the Bank is predicting annual CPI inflation of 2.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2019.

It is thus signalling a long period of above-target inflation. This will come as a real shock to households after a long period of near-zero inflation, and at times deflation. With companies likely to be holding the purse strings tightly in terms of pay rises, given the weak economic outlook, you can expect this higher inflation to squeeze household finances painfully.

The Bank of England is meanwhile forecasting a rise in UK unemployment on the International Labour Organisation measure from 4.9 per cent in the current quarter to 5.4 per cent in a year’s time, and then to 5.6 per cent in the final three months of 2018. It also forecasts a 5.6 per cent ILO unemployment rate for the fourth quarter of 2019.

It has raised its UK growth forecasts for this year and next, to 2.2 per cent and 1.4 per cent respectively, from two per cent and 0.8 per cent back in August, but these new projections of expansion remain way below a long-term average put at around 2.75 per cent by Bank Governor Mark Carney.

And the Bank yesterday cut its forecast of 2018 growth from 1.8 per cent to 1.5 per cent, and is predicting expansion of only 1.6 per cent in 2019.

Amid the post- Brexit vote shambles, you imagine it would not take much to turn these very weak rates of growth into something much more like stagnation or worse.

It seems many Brexiters dream of long-gone days of Empire.

However, they might be about to experience something more recent, from the 1970s. Stagflation.