Inflation is the unseen robber that diminishes our savings and makes a mockery of our plans for the future. Reeves must explain what she plans to do about it before it gets out of control, says Eliot Wilson

When Lord Gove hinted in The Spectator last month at parallels between contemporary Britain and Weimar Germany, one of the dark terrors he naturally invoked was inflation. He conceded that we have not approached Weimar levels: at its worst in 1923, Germany’s hyperinflation was more than 40 per cent a day. We are not even in the territory of the cautionary tale of 1970s Britain, when it peaked at 27 per cent. But we should congratulate no-one for the fact we are not experiencing an inflationary crisis of historic proportions.

Inflation is an economic poison, and there is no room for complacency. The most recent analysis from the International Monetary Fund predicts that the United Kingdom will have the highest inflation rate in the G7, and Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist, has sounded an admonitory note.

“One has to be very careful this increase in inflation, which we’ve seen in the past year, which we assess to be temporary, really turns out to be temporary.”

Unpicking the........

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