History. 4 of 10: rose in August 2006, April 2011, June and July 2022; fell or stayed the same in the other six.
Hunch. On 2 October the RAC put petrol at 174.71p a litre, up from the 169.5p the ONS counted in September.
The October inflation market resolves on the ONS bulletin Consumer price inflation, UK: October 2026, out at 7am on 18 November: YES if the CPI rate for the 12 months to October is 3.6% or higher as first published, and NO if it is 3.5% or lower. BBC News and The Guardian reports of the day settle it if the ONS page does not open, and if no figure is out by 30 November the market is void.
We looked for cases where a war abroad pushed UK petrol prices up in the month before an inflation figure, and newspapers at the time linked the two. We found ten such months since 2006, from five different wars. Three of them come from this year’s war with Iran. Each time we checked whether the yearly rate rose against the month before.