Ben Marlow:

All hail the miraculous high street reawakening. The country is suddenly shopping again, and what a suitably British revolution it is. There’s been a giant DIY boom as homeowners spruce up the houses millions of us have been spending far too much time in; and we’ve been splurging on sofas, TVS and laptops.

Where the office had long been the home for many battle-weary commuters, the home is now the office. Sales of hardware, furniture and appliances have rebounded to near pre-lockdown levels.

Meanwhile, the nation is eating more than ever, or perhaps just eating much more at home. Our new fridges, freezers and kitchen cupboards are fit to bursting with all the essentials of lockdown life – tea and biscuits, plus ice-creams and cleaning products, according to Unilever boss Alan Jope.

Online shopping remains at record levels. Any retailer with a functioning website and delivery capabilities is reaping the rewards, or at least helping to cushion some of the pain from store sales that evaporated after March’s government-imposed restrictions. But quite frankly, any chain that had failed to catch up with the internet shopping phenomenon after a clear two-decade trend probably doesn’t deserve to exist.

Yet the most encouraging piece of news is that while digital sales now count for £3 in every £10 spent, people have been actually getting out of their homes and visiting proper stores again, dragging down the proportion of online sales from its record peak in May.

Retail sales actually smashed forecasts in June after the easing of lockdown, jumping 13.9pc month on month, compared to expectations for an 8pc uptick, figures from the Office for National Statistics show. And even a 1.6pc year-on-year contraction was much smaller than forecasts of a 6.4pc decrease.

The big unknown on the high street is of course the new mandatory rules around masks. Shops not only won’t be able to enforce mask-wearing but, as many have already said publicly, they are simply not willing to. Meanwhile, the police rightly point out that they don’t have the resources to, and if they did, aren’t prepared to patrol supermarket aisles hunting for offenders. Shoppers would simply stay away if it came to that.

So once again, just like the confusion around the two-metre social distancing rule, and the short-lived quarantine restrictions, government guidance is muddled and impractical. It may even act as another restraint on the economic recovery, discouraging people from leaving their homes and turning us into a nation of online obsessives. The Government cannot continue to self-harm in this way.

But the bright spots shouldn’t be overlooked. Indeed, it is perfectly sensible to think that the reopening of pubs, restaurants, hotels and hairdressers in England this month, not to mention cinemas, theatres and galleries, could provide another much-needed lift.

Meanwhile, nearly £16bn of net repayments in unsecured consumer debt between March and May mean household finances are in pretty good shape.

Perhaps the V-shaped recovery isn’t dead after all.

BA looks to land new funds

If British Airways owner IAG does press ahead with plans to raise more than £2bn to shore up its finances, then it is a significant moment in the crisis sweeping through the aviation industry.

Boss Willie Walsh has repeatedly dismissed the idea that there should be a sector-wide state bailout for airlines on the basis that BA and its sister carriers Iberia and Aer Lingus can stand on their own two feet.

A cash call, equity placing or convertible bond issue of that size would underline how stretched IAG’S balance sheet is, but equally it would vindicate Walsh’s insistence that BA can survive without begging the Government to come to its rescue.

That’s not to say the airline has been entirely self-sufficient during the crisis. Far from it, in fact. BA has tapped into the state-backed coronavirus corporate finance scheme and used the Chancellor’s furlough scheme, and the Spanish bits of IAG, Iberia and Vueling, accepted €1bn (£910m) of government loans in May.

But Air France and Lufthansa have both gone cap in hand to taxpayers, securing a €7bn bailout from the French state, and a €9bn lifeline from Berlin, respectively.

Compared to its stricken overseas competitors, IAG is a veritable picture of health.