UK Chancellor Hunt Mocked Over Cringeworthy Inflation ‘Explainer’ Video
Britain’s Chancellor Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street to deliver his autumn financial statement to Parliament
InternationalIndiaAfricaJames TweedieConservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has ambitiously vowed to halve double-digit inflation and end the recession this year, bringing economic and jobs growth back to Britain. But his pro-austerity chancellor Jeremy Hunt has warned aid to businesses hit by the fuel price crisis could be cut this spring.The UK’s chancellor of the exchequer has been roasted online after tweeting patronising video explaining inflation. In the clip Chancellor Hunt visits a cafeteria and orders a “flat white” to illustrate what has gone wrong with the economy.“I’m afraid coffee is getting more expensive,” the chancellor explains. “A year ago it would have been around £2.50, but now it’s gone up to nearly £3 a cup.””The pound in your pocket is worth less than it used to be,” Hunt continued in an echo of prime minister Harold Wilson’s oft-lampooned 1967 speech, when the Labour leader insisted devaluation of sterling would not affect prices.Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, tweeted sarcastically that the video would “go down as a classic of the genre” — while poking fun at Hunt’s very rough arithmetic and poor punctuation.London School of Economics media professor Charlie Beckett accused the ruling Conservative party of “using public money to produce propaganda” with the video, produced by the Treasury.Former education secretary Kit Malthouse, a fellow Tory, suggested in a tweet that the rampant inflation was caused by “money supply”. Former chancellor and current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak oversaw hundreds of billions of spending on aid to businesses and furloughed workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.”I hope he recycled all those cups he wasted,” observed Steven Fielding, emeritus politics professor at the University of Nottingham.
WorldUK Dodged Recession in November Thanks to World Cup Drinking Binge13 January, 12:15 GMTHunt admitted that food prices had risen by 16 per cent — and even more for the items the poorest families typically buy.But he blamed the cost-of-living crisis on the supply-chain disruption caused by the pandemic lockdown, along with “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which pushed global gas prices to their highest-ever levels.”The British government has led the way on Western sanctions and trade embargoes on Russia since it launched its de-Nazification operation in Ukraine on February 24 last year, while Moscow has accused Sunak’s short-lived predecessor Liz Truss of orchestrating the blowing-up of Russia’s submarine Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines to Germany.
"All of that means that the price of a cup of coffee has gone up,” Hunt said, returning to his hot beverage metaphor. “People who transport coffee beans across the oceans have to pay more for their fuel. People who transport the coffee beans in the UK have to pay more. And the result is they have to put up the price of a cup of coffee, otherwise they lose money."
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that consumer price index (CPI) inflation was running at 10.5 per cent in December, compared to the same month of 2021. The retail price index (RPI) rate was running at 15.2 per cent, down from 16.4 per cent in October.
