Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian.
The PM wants to talk about patriotism when the issue that is really affecting people is the cost of living. If he doesn’t wise up, that dissonance will sink him.
The ancient charge levelled against politicians is that they chase public opinion as tirelessly as terriers tailing a caravan. When voters shout, ministers jump to and blurt out a reply, no matter how bad. But there is one problem above any other that Britons say causes them personal distress. It is pushing many to desperate action. It’s the same issue that may well seal the next election. It’s no secret, but instead regularly flashes deepest red in polls. Yet it is neither discussed by our prime minister nor receives urgent ministerial attention. And no newspaper is bawling about it in 72-point type.
Here is a case study in just how warped politics and the media are in 2025, and how MPs and journalists work against the interests of their voters and audiences. I refer to the cost of living.
Mention it in Westminster, and your audience will think you are regurgitating recent history. The cost of living crisis? Wasn’t that Liz and Rishi’s bag? After Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and skittled energy markets in the process. Huge public anger; a costly giveaway; many glittering careers sacrificed. Prime fodder, surely, for a cracking episode of The Rest is History.
But for most other Britons, this isn’t the stuff of memories. They are still in a cost of living crisis. Whether at Ocado or Aldi, food prices keep rising. School uniforms are extortionate. University tuition fees for the new term – jacked up. And last week the cap on energy bills was hiked – just in time for winter.
Almost four years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices rocketing, the average British family is still under huge financial stress. True, the Bank of England is no longer panicking about inflation now that it has gone from double digits to hovering around “only” 4%. But that’s little comfort for most households, who can see there are fewer bags in their weekly shop – and that their pay (up by 20% since 2021) hasn’t kept up with either prices (up 28% since 2020) or fuel bills (which have typically risen by almost £500 in only four years).
Whenever the polling company More in Common asks voters to list the main problems facing the UK, the cost of living comes top. What about immigration? It’s rising, and some other pollsters put it just ahead of cost of living. But when voters are asked the biggest issues in their day to day lives, cost of living or financial pressures come way out in front.
So here is the UK’s No 1 political problem: rising bills. You may have heard it come up at the school gate or at a local bus stop. You may be among the 58% of British households preparing for a colder home this winter. In which case, you will have been almost ignored by leading politicians.
“Westminster treats the cost of living as an issue from two years ago; they’ve moved on,” says Chris Annous at More in Common. “But for the rest of Britain it’s still their biggest issue.” At focus groups, he’s noticed that wherever the venue and whatever the subject, those attending can’t stop bringing up the cost of living. From men’s health to green spaces, they all come back to bills.
In Liverpool last week, Keir Starmer gave his big speech the day before energy regulators raised the cap. The cost of living got mentioned twice in the whole thing. Patriotism? Five times. And flags? Well, there was a whole section on those, along with a dreamy peroration on the England football team in 1996. “An England that belonged to our grandparents and our history,” cried the prime minister. But this imagined England never seems to have room for the people working all the hours and wondering why they have more month than money. Perhaps even raising the omission now counts as un-British.
In this great displacement of political attention, at the centre is the media. I asked the Guardian’s research department to count up the number of stories in national newspapers about asylum seekers or small boats or refugees. They found 542 in just the past month. And how many on the cost of living or essentials or living standards? Just 45.
About 33,000 people have crossed the Channel so far this year. We can talk another time about the rights and wrongs of our asylum system, but just on the numbers that is a number almost insignificant besides the more than 1m households already in the red on their fuel bills and with no repayment plan.
Dealing with the high prices of housing, food, utilities and transport would require real politics, rather than the fake politics of waving St George’s flags and locking up pensioners for mentioning Palestine Action. But if Labour ministers carry on pretending that they are helpless to tackle high prices in the face of the markets, they will pay an extortionate political price. A grab bag of means-tested benefits and breakfast clubs at school won’t do it, and extending childcare was actually Jeremy Hunt’s wheeze. It’s already those most financially fearful who are deserting Labour – and the numbers in financial distress are set to grow.
Last month, economists at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) published some extraordinary research on the likely future for British living standards between now and the next election. Most governments that serve a full term preside over a rise in living standards of just over 10%. The exception so far appears to be the reign of Boris Johnson/Liz Truss/Rishi Sunak, where living standards look to have stayed the same for the entire five years. That explains a lot of the political volatility, but what lies ahead looks likely to be a lot worse.
Taking household incomes after taxes and inflation and housing costs and mapping them against official projections for the economy, they found that unless Labour acted very soon, it was likely to preside over an outright shrinkage in British living standards. This has never happened since records began. It would mean Britons had suffered a decade of no improvement to their living standards. Forget all the missions, forget the promises of change: the typical family would be worse off – and the poorest families would really suffer, losing more than £1,000 a year in disposable income.
“If anything is going to finish this Labour government, it will be the cost of living,” says Alfie Stirling, director of insight and policy at JRF. “Too many people seeing too little improvement in their day-to-day lives and livelihood.”
And in that vast gulf between what ministers are talking about and what’s gnawing away at voters at night, you have the conditions not just for the wipeout of a Labour government but for destabilising an entire democracy. As a motto for government, “let them eat flags” has the ring of other regimes that ended badly. Because when people see that the system offers them no improvement and their kids no hope, why wouldn’t they choose to smash up the entire thing?
