Why is Jeremy Hunt pretending he can control inflation?

When Rishi Sunak laid out his five pledges at the start of the year, his first and most prominent one was to halve inflation in 2023. A few weeks on: how’s that going?   

This morning’s inflation figures would suggest not so well. Inflation fell in the 12 months leading up to December 2022 to 10.5 per cent, down from 10.7 per cent in November. So prices are moving in the right direction, but at a snail’s pace. Ross Clark has the details here, where he highlights how the rising cost of food and domestic services is cancelling out falling energy prices. Inflation is still projected to fall significantly by the time we reach summer, but as last month’s figures show, the process of getting there will not be an easy one.

You could try and defend the government by saying that today’s update predates Sunak’s pledge to cut inflation. The far more honest analysis, however, would be to acknowledge that the government had no control over last month’s inflation figures, in the same way that it will have no control over inflation updates in the coming months.