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Travel & Leisure tops the fire count at 28 with velocity running at a 0.69 z-score, which reads as consumers still booking. It isn't. Layer in UK credit card lending sitting at the 99th percentile of historical growth and CPIX at 57.3 in rising-pressure territory, and the more honest read is that households are borrowing to absorb the Brent-driven cost pass-through, not spending freely. Airlines can't reprice fuel mid-contract, so the surcharge lands later, in higher fares booked on plastic.

That matters against a 10-year gilt at 4.88% and CPI holding at 3.0%. The Bank of England's task just got harder: a stress-borrowing consumer is not the demand signal you cut rates into, but a private sector already eating a Hormuz-driven input shock is not one you hold rates against either. Vacancies at 707k and unemployment at 4.9% say the labour market isn't the constraint. The credit card data says the constraint is arriving through household balance sheets instead, and it's arriving now, not next quarter.

Watch the gap between headline travel spend and card-lending growth. When Travel & Leisure fires stay elevated while credit growth decelerates, that's the tell that borrowing capacity, not demand, was doing the work all along.

Operators in consumer-facing sectors should treat current spend levels as debt-funded, not durable, and price contingency into Q2 forecasts accordingly.