Inflation Becoming A Political Issue

[martingale]

Rather hypocritical of Labour but none the less it could be interesting from an interest rates and HPC perspective if inflation becomes the new hot political topic.

Why Ed Miliband's getting it right on the cost of living

George Osborne's budget, due in two weeks' time, will be billed as an agenda for growth. This is welcome, but a year late. The burning agenda now is the cost of living. It was our cover story for The Spectator last October: why fret about mild 1 percent-a-year cuts, we asked, when the real killer will be prices? Petrol at 130p a litre is only the most visible sign of this. Other horrors confront shoppers in the supermarket - salmon fillets up by a third, potatoes and butter by a quarter. When Alan Duncan speculated that petrol could hit 200p, he was on the right scent. While the BBC is talking about cuts and Osborne is talking about jobs, Ed Miliband is now talking about the cost of living - even helping to launch a Commission on the Cost of Living. He has, I hate to say, chosen his campaign theme well. The cost of living will be the story of 2011.

full article(spectator)

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If living standards keep falling, get ready for Ed’s Reagan moment

The charge that the Tory-led coalition has no plan to protect living standards is slowly gaining traction.

Come the 2015 general election, and the inevitable television debates, Ed Miliband might consider borrowing a line from Ronald Reagan. "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" he asked in October 1980, during the closing remarks of the final presidential debate against the Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter. It was a simple yet devastating question that resonated with a disgruntled American public, ground down by a recession at home and an energy crisis abroad. The hapless Carter suffered a landslide defeat.

Here in the UK, three decades on, the fallout from the recession continues to blight the economy. Growth has gone negative, unemployment stands at almost 2.5 million, wages are stagnating and inflation has risen to 4 per cent - double the target rate - as global oil and commodity prices soar. Worse still, the "age of austerity" has yet to begin: fiscal consolidation starts in earnest on 1 April. Conservative and progressive politicians obsess over spending cuts and the Budget deficit; meanwhile, low-and middle-income households witness their living standards decline at an increasing pace.

full article (new statesman)

[RichB]

living standards have absolutely fallen through the floor for all the people that stayed out of the housing bubble. Purely down to labours economic mismanagement.

The sooner they ****** off and drown themselves the better all round, this showerofshit should be too embarrassed to even show their faces let alone campaign for election.