■ THE chairman

of NatWest compared the UK economy to cartoon character Road Runner - saying ‘we’ve run off the cliff and the legs are still moving but we’re just hanging in mid-air’.

At NatWest’s annual general meeting, Sir Howard Davies told the Mail it was not yet seeing stress in its customer loan book, but said: ‘If you ask me again in two months I think that will be different.’

He likened the economy to Looney Tunes character Road Runner, a bird which runs off the edge of cliffs and hangs in the air while its pursuer plummets to earth.

He said the economy was recovering from Covid but is now suffering as the cost of living soars, adding it was probably a matter of time before economic growth stalled. Debit card spending – on the rise post-lockdown – has begun to fall again.

Davies said: ‘It’s probably because people are paying more for their bills, so are reducing their spending when they go out.’