‘Squeezing everybody, plunging 1.3m into absolute poverty, is a political choice’ – Kevin Maguire

The Conservative Government is worsening the cost of living crisis and after years of the Tories calling the financial shots, the penny is dropping with electorate, Kevin Maguire says

A tax-rising Conservative Government’s worsening the cost of ­living crisis is a ­disaster made in Downing Street.

Rifts between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, prickly neighbours in Nos 10 and 11 forever complaining about each other, are partners in crime.

As are the hundreds of Tory MPs who automatically cheered a mini-Budget imposing the biggest blow to living standards since records began in 1956.

The scandal will stick in a way the bad Brexit deal never did to slippery Johnson.

And superficial Sunak’s garage forecourt stunt with a Sainsbury’s worker’s car and half-baked ramblings about bread are a Chancellor no longer engaging his loaf.

Because intervention to support jobs amid Covid proved a Government can protect living standards when it wants to.

Squeezing virtually everybody, plunging 1.3million including hundreds of thousands of kids into absolute poverty, is a political choice.

Johnson and Sunak’s choice. The Conservative Party’s choice.

Keir Starmer and his money woman Rachel Reeves can’t believe their luck.

Not even offering crumbs from the Tory table when overall taxes are increasing is an epic miscalculation by Conservatives losing touch with the country.

Banking on giving a measly penny back in April 2024 shortly after or a month before a General Election is a strategy hoping voters battered this year and next will be grateful.

Sunak’s tanking poll ratings suggest they won’t be, Ukraine not bought as an excuse.

David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg falsely pinned Tory austerity cuts in the miserable ConDem coalition years on Labour.

After a dirty dozen years of the Conservatives calling the financial shots, Johnson and Sunak won’t get away with that lame excuse.

The Tories are the problem. And the penny’s dropping with the electorate.