The day after Rishi Sunak was mobbed at the pub by merry drinkers in the wake of his big-spending Budget, the hangover is starting to kick in.
Damning analysis by leading think tanks suggests the Chancellor’s plans will leave millions of Brits worse off as the cost of living crisis bites.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies says middle-earners are on course to lose an average of £180 per year, with small wage increases being wiped out by inflation and higher tax on incomes.
Paul Johnson, the IFS director, poured cold water on Sunak’s cheerful promise of “a new age of optimism”, saying that voters wouldn’t get much “feelgood factor” and that “high inflation, rising taxes, and poor growth, still undermined more by Brexit than by the pandemic, will see real living standards barely rising and, for many, falling over the next year.”
