Burnham’s solutions must not lie in the 1970s
From our UK edition
Andy Burnham is right. The cost of living is foremost in people’s minds just now. Naturally his electricity bill VAT holiday and freeze of bus fares find agreement in television news vox pops and focus groups. But he offers no explanation for the causes and concentrates only on the symptoms. Obviously, the removal of the 5 per cent VAT will be nice for consumers. But underlying inflation today relates to government debauchery of money and disruptions of supply caused by Trump’s tariffs and his short war, by Putin’s long war and Ed Miliband’s net-zero trap, which makes us pay expensive green levies and bans new domestic fossil fuel production. The remedy does not lie in the 1970s-style pretence that things can be made cheaper by fiat.
