Finally, we have a date for the General Election – 4 July 2024. The fact that this was announced on a day when inflation figures shows a fall in CPI to 2.3% is no coincidence – this was likely seen as the best possible news for Sunak and the Tories. It is worth remembering that this is not actually good news for you and your bills.
Remember that inflation is a measure of how much a basket of goods have increased in cost by over the last 12 months. That means that with inflation at 2.3%, things cost on average 2.3% more than they did last May. This means that things have not gotten cheaper for you, in fact they have continued to increase in cost. This is on top of the price increase that already happened as a result of inflation hitting double digits.
The cumulative effect is shown in this chart, which shows the running effect of price rises over the last 5 years. As you can see, the recent fall in reported inflation does not mean that anything has gotten cheaper. In fact, you can see that over the 5 year period a bundle of goods costing £100 has increased in price so that you would now pay £124.
None of us are better off with today’s announcement. At best we are slightly less worse off than we might otherwise have been.
This hasn’t stopped certain luminaries from the Conservative Party from touting this as a major success story. Make no mistake, this is spin, nothing more. But even if it is deemed to be something more, what have the Conservatives done to bring inflation down, given they repeatedly claim that their plan is working?
In reality, the answer is “nothing”. Their plan has been to sit back and let the inflation figures revert back to their normal levels and to pretend that 2.3% inflation after 11% inflation somehow means that things are getting cheaper when they aren’t.
Remember, this government stood back and did nothing to help you with rising costs. Don’t forget that, don’t forgive it, and make sure that you vote them out in favour of a party that will actually do something to help with the cost of living crisis.
