THE MAGICIAN'S ECONOMICS

Rishi Sunak has barely been able to contain his excitement about inflation falling, claiming this miracle of economics is all down to Tory management. Well sorry to be a party pooper but "Hogwash!". Inflation has halved not because of any clever handling by the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt but because the world oil and gas market price has fallen. They are doing the usual sleight of hand, like a bad card trick, as long as the ace they predicted turns up it doesn't matter where they had it hidden. 

To get the real feel for Conservative economics we only have to cast our minds back to last year, when Truss and Kwartang unleashed their catastrophic budget and crashed the British economy. Truss was actually voted for by Conservative party members, they LIKED her notion of economics. They were enthralled by visions of personal wealth being the stimulant for growth, corporation tax so low Britain becomes the next tax haven. But Britain does not exist in a Tory bubble of indifference to world economics, it is, like all economies, at the behest of what is going on elsewhere. So claiming credit for halving inflation here is a lie. 

The Chancellor in his autumn statement today tinkers with little bits of cash, giving with one hand what he will take with the other. The vulnerable will still be vulnerable, food prices still sky high, heating bills unaffordable, life for the majority of us still very difficult; but the Tories will strut around pretending they have cracked it, solved our economic woes and deserve thanks from a doubting public. Somehow, they seem to think that we won't notice that both the Bank of England and the Office of Budget Responsibility say that the British economy is in the doldrums, flatlining for the next two years - a direct consequence of the fiscal incompetence of the Tory administration of the last 12 years and the 48 days of the Truss lunacy.  But the public is not stupid, it will take more than the flurry of the magician's wand, producing rabbits out of his hat, to convince them to trust them again.

They should consider the wise words ex-Tory minister David Gauke before they rush to claim fiscal trickery:

 "There is a lesson to be learned here: if the government wants to avoid the blame for higher inflation, it can’t try to take the credit when it falls."