He Already Knows

Sky News: "Andy Burnham will start a national tour on Monday to hear people's concerns over the cost of living."

We can save him the diesel.

The concern is that things cost considerably more than they used to and wages have not kept up. That is the whole of it. There is no region of this country where the answer will come back different, no church hall in which someone will stand up and reveal a factor the Treasury had not considered. Everybody knows. He knows. Everybody knows he knows. He knows that everybody knows that he knows.

Note also the order of events. The VAT cut on electricity was announced before the tour, not after it. If the policy is already decided, the listening is not research. It is publicity for a decision that has been taken.

And when a listening tour concludes, it usually concludes the same way: employers should pay more. Whatever the merits, that is not a free move. Labour is a cost embedded in everything, and it is embedded most heavily in the things people notice — picking, processing, haulage, the shelf. Economists argue about how much of it comes back as higher prices. Nobody serious argues that none of it does.

The levers that would actually shift this — energy costs, tax thresholds that quietly drag people into higher bands, the price of building a house — are all held in London and none of them are on the itinerary.

You do not need a tour to find out that things are expensive. You need one to be seen looking.