Only lack of judgment can explain the chancellor’s refusal to help those worst affected by the cost of living crisis
It’s nearly nine years now since David Cameron was asked, at the height of austerity, the price of a loaf of bread.
His immortal reply was that he didn’t really know as he made his own loaves in a breadmaker, preferably with fancy Cotswolds flour. Neither he nor George Osborne ever really recovered from Nadine Dorries calling them “two posh boys who don’t know the price of milk” so maybe that’s why, when Rishi Sunak was asked on breakfast television what he’d personally noticed about the soaring cost of living, his earnest answer was the price of bread. And that’s where things fell apart. What kind of bread did he buy, the presenter demanded? A Hovis seeded thing, said the chancellor, before confiding that due to varying levels of healthiness within the family (the Peloton-toned chancellor doesn’t look like a carbs man) they “all have different breads” in their house. Or perhaps, houses. The swimming pool and gym complex the Sunaks are building at their place in Yorkshire is the talk of the Westminster tearooms, which is presumably why when the SNP’s Treasury spokesperson Alison Thewliss raised the plight of families on pre-payment meters in parliament this week, she added snippily that you can’t get them for heated pools.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
Guardian Newsroom: The cost of living crisis
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