Star comment: Government must do all it can over cost of living crisis

Got any money spare? About £700 perhaps?

That is the extent of the hit to household average energy bills thanks to the 54 per cent increase in the energy price cap.

For families who are struggling as it is, it is a recipe for yet more severe hardship.

You can’t say there was no warning. The rise in gas prices on global markets has been extraordinary and has sparked a crisis. The energy price cap was meant to give a measure of protection to ordinary people but the movements on the market have not been small, rather they have been a tidal wave which has overwhelmed all before it. In short the cap at the current level was out of date and unsustainable.

In grasping for factors which will help ease the financial burden, at least the new cap level will miss the energy-guzzling winter period, as it takes effect from April. And Rishi Sunak is offering a package of measures which will cushion the impact in households which are less well off. Those things he has announced will not spare consumers pain, but will mean that the pain will not be quite as bad as it would otherwise have been.

After the dreadful Covid era and the signs that the UK is moving to a situation in which it lives with the virus threat, rather than have it dominate all areas of life, there was a hope that 2022 would bring a measure of cheer and optimism. It isn’t shaping up like that. Britain is moving on from a pandemic crisis to a cost of living crisis which will bring a different sort of misery.

Inflation is running at a higher level than it has done for years. It makes people poorer by eating away at their hard-earned income.

And the announcement of a 0.5 per cent rise in interest rates dips further into the pockets of everybody who owes money, particularly those paying mortgages who will have to find significant extra amounts to meet their repayments. As the rise in house prices has led buyers to stretch themselves financially to realise the dream of owning their own home, this rise could tip some of them over the edge.

From a political standpoint, all this adds to Boris Johnson’s troubles. One of the refrains often heard in the Brexit debate was that “nobody voted to make themselves poorer”. Without revisiting those arguments, nobody gave Boris Johnson such a big majority at the last general election to make themselves poorer.

So the Government will need to do all it can to mitigate the effects of this crisis, or it will surely pay an electoral price.