The Cost of Existence

If lowering the cost of living is the paramount test for any new governing regime, how might Andy Burnham go about it? Under Starmer and Reeves, a chorus of ministers responded to rising bills and darkening forecasts by claiming that they would pull ‘every lever’ to keep prices down.

They didn’t. A wide range of levers — including perhaps the most immediately effective, price controls — were left untouched, allowing Reform UK to feed off the lifeblood of public despair. To meet its promise, Labour would have had to adopt radical policies on a scale rarely acknowledged, underpinned by a firm political resolve.

There are many other priorities for a truly Labour administration, not least the fumigation that’s needed after the infestation of Mandelsonian right-wingers like Morgan McSweeney. There are international challenges across Trump’s war-torn empire, from Palestine to Iran. There’s the domination of the bond markets over economic policy, the cancerous influence of the City, out-of-control defence spending, the crisis of social care and the need to reconnect with the trade unions.

But it’s the cost of living that will determine whether the government succeeds in ‘turning things around’ for many who see deprivation as the norm. Four percent of households — 2.8 million people — are reliant on food banks, with millions more suffering from food insecurity. Food inflation is far ahead of the basic rate and rising further still, with some economists predicting it will reach 10 percent this year.

If reversing this trend is the only way to undermine Nigel Farage’s hope of entering Number 10, then price controls, long seen as beyond the bounds of legitimate policymaking, need to be on the table. Even Reeves’s Treasury conceded the principle when supermarket chiefs were asked — very politely — if they wouldn’t mind capping some essentials. But this tentative plea came up against the brick wall of business, retailers and orthodox economists, who protested that it would ‘distort the market’, cause shortages and increase inflation. The Chief Executive of M&S Stuart Machin (remuneration £4m last year, down from £7m the year before) summed up the industry view when he described such measures as ‘completely preposterous’. The Treasury ministers scattered like startled cats.

Yet the very fact that the Treasury was willing to entertain the possibility of price controls was a major step, with implications for the new administration. While supermarkets complain of thin margins of around 2 to 4 percent, the vast trading base delivers huge aggregate profits: in 2025 Tesco turned over £3.1bn and Sainsbury’s £1bn. Recognising the reality of the situation, governments in other countries have not been so pusillanimous. France and Spain have implemented both mandatory price controls and ‘name and shame’ policies for price-gougers, benefiting consumers with no consequential rise in inflation.

Though there was an inevitable outcry from business interests in each case, politicians powered through. In France, seventy-five companies including giant food manufacturers such as Unilever signed an agreement with the government to cut prices on staples, including beef, pork and milk, in the knowledge that failure to comply would lead to checks and sanctions. In Spain, the Socialist government of Pedro Sánchez has introduced targeted anti-profiteering policies alongside rent controls and energy price freezes and caps, ramping up such measures in response to Trump’s most recent military adventure.

Critics in the business world are masters of self-fulfilling prophecy. They tell us that when costs are kept low demand will go up, causing retailers to hike their other prices and sending inflation skyward. But these international examples show that price controls, when properly designed and able to balance between mandatory and voluntary iterations, can avoid this doomsday scenario. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is now presiding over vote-winning citywide rent freezes and a publicly-owned nonprofit grocery network. It would be self-sabotage to rule out these policies here in Britain, where polling shows that they are widely popular.

In Joanna Mack’s definitive new study of UK poverty, Impoverished (2026), one of her interviewees remarks that ‘It’s not a standard of living. It’s existence.’ Behind the sterile abstractions of economic discourse there is an uncomfortable truth: without a perceptible improvement in the texture of working-class life, the change of personnel in Downing Street will not restore the fortunes of the Labour Party let alone the country. Swapping out the main character isn’t enough when the entire script needs rewriting.