Forget the budget: the scars left by 11% inflation will last for years to come | Martin Kettle

It’s more than 40 years since UK inflation was so high. Voters will not forget, nor will they likely forgive, come the next election

In no way can Jeremy Hunt’s autumn financial statement on Thursday be treated as a budget like any other. The economic stakes for the country and the political stakes for the Conservative government after the Liz Truss debacle are simply too high and too serious for that. Today, though, the stakes ratcheted up a notch, when the UK inflation rate rose unexpectedly steeply in the year to October to reach 11.1%.

This is a big moment, resonant with grimmer 20th-century times. It comes in part as the latest in a series of severe economic shocks, following Brexit, Covid and the energy crisis, that appear to be driving Britain into a longer and deeper recession than its neighbours, and which are not yet over. But the inflation spike is also an event of which millions of voters, with mortgages, overdrafts and needs that they cannot cover, have no recent experience.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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