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Be prepared to recall past scandals and wars, which still resonate to this day. Tuesday is the fifth anniversary of the fire that engulfed Grenfell Tower in west London, exposing flaws in the building’s cladding and triggering a crisis for flat owners across the UK. . create consequences.

It also happens to be the 40th anniversary of the end of the Falklands War, the wounds from that still fresh in Buenos Aires.

Friday marks half a century since the break-in at the Watergate hotel-apartment-office complex in Washington. Thankfully, this issue was resolved more quickly, though it left behind the nasty legacy of suffixes associated with what seems to be every subsequent political scandal.

The latest of these, “partygate”, has a way to run, although the protagonist, UK prime minister Boris Johnson, will (ironically) this week be at the center of a legal social gathering since since he was 58 on Saturday.

Partygate spin-off series, You Are (Poor) Servedis likely to see another section with the government’s promise to publish controversial and long-delayed legislation to override the Northern Ireland protocol on Monday. As my colleague Peter Foster noted in Excellent Brexit Briefing Last week, this was unlikely to end well.

Johnson is also expected to announce a “plan for development“This week with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. After OECD verdict on UK growth next year – only sanctioned Russia is forecast to be worse among the G20 nations – it clearly needs a new plan, if not a new PM to provide it.

France again goes to the polls on Sunday for the second round of parliamentary elections. The concern for newly elected president Emmanuel Macron this time is not leftist but a coalition from the left.

There will be at least one solution this week. Colombians will go to the polls on Sunday for the second round of their country’s presidential election, which will decide whether populist Rodolfo Hernández can see off former left-wing guerrilla Gustavo Petro. Whatever the outcome, it will be an interesting contest.

Economic data

It will be a week (no longer) for interest rate news. The main attraction will be the gathering of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee, but there will also be decisions from the Bank of England and equivalent institutions in Japan, Switzerland and Brazil.

The question is not whether monetary tightening will be accelerated, but to what extent – the answer to this question depends in part on your belief in its ability to achieve it. soft landing of certain economy or whether the economy will inevitably fall into recession.

The US inflation soars on Friday prompted discussion of rapid tightening. Policymakers have signaled that, at the very least, the Fed will deliver a string of half-point rate hikes. Traders have priced the federal funds rate up to around 2.9% year-end from the current target range of 0.75 to 1%. OECD set its marker last week before US inflation numbers were released, calling on the Fed to act faster.

Companies

Retail is strongly represented in this week’s earnings calendar. The headline act was Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain, with observers keen to hear more about how inflation affects household spending. However, just two months after the full-year results, few expected the company to go the opposite direction Its cautious scenario that profits this year will be held back by the need to keep prices for shoppers in check.

I asked Jonathan Eley, the FT’s retail correspondent, to say. “The company has been gaining market share in recent months, but first-quarter revenue growth figures will be mixed due to the closure of pubs and restaurants in the same period a year ago,” he said. “That boosted supermarket sales but hurt Booker, Tesco’s wholesale operations.”

Among analyst comments, Barclays had forecast an overall decline of 1.8% in the UK, with lower volume partially offset by higher prices.

Read the calendar a week in advance here