Don’t let the Tories take the credit for lowering inflation – we’re all still worse off

Jeremy Hunt was quick to hit the airwaves this morning to crow about the inflation rate reaching its lowest levels in two years. But, says Sean O’Grady, it doesn’t feel like Britain is booming – and whose fault is that?

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt insisted that the government’s ‘plan is working’ to get the economy growing (PA Wire)

If you’re a glass half-full sort of person – or a government minister desperate for a positive headline – you’ll see the latest fall in the annual rate of price inflation as unalloyed good news. Which, in a way, it is, because it’s better than the alternative, which we’ve suffered from for too long.

If, like me, your one of life’s pessimists, you won’t be too impressed by prices rising yet again, ie another 3.4 per cent on top of all the other increases over the last couple of years (about 20 per cent) – which is on top of increases in council tax, frozen income tax thresholds and wages not always keeping up. If you feel worse off than you did before the pandemic, say, you’d be right.

This, as has been well advertised by the opposition, is the first parliament in the modern age where British living standards are lower than they were when the brief but bullish Johnsonian era began with the “Get Brexit Done” election of December 2019.