Living under a Conservative Government at Westminster makes us all poorer – and it’s about to get worse. A report issued by the Office for Budget Responsibility ahead of the Autumn Statement contained some staggering numbers.
It found that real household disposable income – the cash you have left after monthly bills – will drop by seven per cent on average over the next two years. It’s the biggest fall on record and means UK incomes will be at the same level as they were in 2013. This is the reality of more than 12 years of Tory rule.
Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative Chancellor parachuted into the job as the pound tanked last month, barely mentioned this during his statement to the Commons yesterday. He has cut public spending and imposed a range of tax rises worth a staggering £55billion and ushered in a second age of austerity.
Astonishingly, the UK’s national debt will barely fall over the next five years as a result. The country is treading water as households are looking for a life raft.
The Chancellor did get at least one thing right yesterday and finally confirmed that benefits and the state pension will rise with inflation. We should remember just weeks ago Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng were considering cutting them in real terms.
Hunt and his cronies are desperately trying to pin the blame for this mess on forces beyond their control. It’s true the war in Ukraine has helped push up energy prices to obscene levels. And no one is pretending inflation is not an issue in other Western countries.
But the fact remains the Conservatives have been in ultimate charge of the UK economy for more than a decade and lurched from one disaster to another. It’s no coincidence that while the economies of the US, France, Italy and Germany have already exceeded their pre-pandemic levels, the UK has not.
The economic blame game matters as it will define the next election campaign. Back in 2010, David Cameron convinced many voters the global banking crash was squarely the fault of New Labour.
The now disgraced former prime minister and his sidekick George Osborne never wasted an opportunity to claim austerity was a direct result of Gordon Brown’s time in Downing Street.
It was a grotesque distortion of truth. The austerity unleashed by the Tories a decade ago was a political decision. The economic turmoil caused by Brexit six years later was also a political decision.
When voters eventually go to the polls to elect a new UK Government, they’ll know only too well who has caused living standards to plummet and incomes to drop. The Tories have run out of excuses. We’re all poorer while they remain in office.
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