Here is a number every minister should be made to read out loud: at the end of April 2026, 79% of households in Great Britain reported that their cost of living had risen in the previous month. That is the highest share since late 2022, when energy prices were spiralling after the invasion of Ukraine. We were told the cost-of-living crisis was behind us. For the family doing the weekly shop, it plainly is not.
The Stealth Tax Nobody Voted For
The biggest driver is the quietest one: fiscal drag. Income tax and National Insurance thresholds are frozen until April 2031. As wages rise with inflation, more and more of your pay is dragged into higher tax bands - even though you are no better off in real terms. It is a tax rise by stealth, and it is hitting nurses, plumbers and pensioners who never saw their headline tax rate change.
This is the trick at the heart of Labour's economy. They can stand at the despatch box and claim they have not raised the basic rate of income tax, while quietly pocketing billions extra every year from frozen thresholds. It is dishonest, and working people can feel it in their pay packets even if they cannot name it.
Prices That Never Came Back Down
Food inflation has slowed, but slowing is not falling. The price of bread, milk, fruit and vegetables remains far above where it stood a few years ago. A household that spent around £2,000 a month on essentials in 2021 is now paying closer to £2,450 to £2,500 for the same basket - an extra £5,400 to £6,000 a year. Wages have not kept pace. That gap is the squeeze, and it does not show up in a triumphant press release about headline inflation.
And It's About to Get Worse at the Pump
The temporary 5p-per-litre cut to fuel duty is being reversed, adding around 5p per litre to petrol and diesel. For anyone who drives to work, runs a van, or lives somewhere the bus comes twice a day, that is a direct hit. Punishing drivers is not an economic strategy. It is a tax on getting out of bed and going to work.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would lift the income tax threshold so that no one pays a penny of income tax until they earn £20,000. That single change would take millions of the lowest earners out of tax altogether and put real money back in working people's pockets. We would keep fuel duty low because mobility is not a luxury. And we would end the dishonest game of stealth taxation by being straight with people about what they pay. Lower taxes on workers, an end to the threshold freeze, and an economy that rewards effort rather than punishing it.