Voters want safe streets, not small changes to inflation

For Rishi Sunak, today amounts to another instalment of the fantastic success story of his premiership: that ‘the plan is working’.

A new key statistic about the rate of inflation shows that consumer prices are rising much less quickly. Taming inflation is the singular success among the five key targets he set out at the start of last year.

It is easy to see why a numbers man like the PM would get excited about this. Inflation is at a bit over 2 per cent, compared to average wage growth of nearly 6 per cent. As Mr Micawber famously put it: ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness.’

But a more clued-up leader with better antennae for the public mood would understand at once that today is actually a very bad day. Because for normal people, questions as to whether they, their families and their neighbourhoods are safe are more important than small short-term changes in the aggregate pecuniary situation.