As inflation surges, we need to talk about Brexit’s contribution to the misery

The Resolution Foundation has put the ultimate cost of Brexit in lost wages at £470 per worker, writes James Moore

Inflation is currently at its highest rate for four decades (PA)

Resolution Foundation’s “Big Brexit” report could scarcely have been better timed. With its central conclusion being that wages will be £470 per worker lower, it was published on the same day that inflation reached 9.1 per cent, with worse to come.

The full force of the financial hit from the Tory party’s folly will not be felt for a decade. But at a time when prices are rising faster than a Thomson’s gazelle, it will leave many more families “struggling” when they might otherwise have been “just about managing”.

Sure, there are those who believe that closing the economy, stifling productivity and reducing trade are prices worth paying to shake a fist at Brussels. But how many will still hold this view when Brexit’s bitter fruits are fully harvested?

Britain’s brutal inflationary surge is nowhere near its end; our “Tommie” has been given a steroid shot to make it move even faster.

A small crumb of comfort was provided by the CBI’s manufacturing survey, which said that businesses’ expectations of price rises had fallen slightly. But it gave little other cause for optimism. Indeed, reading the latest missive from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) was rather like being used as a punchbag by someone practising mixed martial arts.

The price of goods produced by UK factories rose 15.7 per cent in the year to May 2022. Ouch! This compares with 14.7 per cent growth in the year to April 2022. Ouch!

The price of materials and fuels used by manufacturers rolled in at a record high of 22.1 per cent in the year to May 2022. That compares with an increase of 20.9 per cent in the year to April 2022. Ouch!

Sky-high fuel prices and escalating food costs were offset to some extent by the price of clothing having risen by less than this time last year, while computer game prices actually fell. The ONS tweeted that.

With all due respect to the gaming community, the latter can hardly be classed as an essential. Clothes-buying can be cut back on. Food-price inflation is a far more serious issue. And food-price inflation was the biggest contributor to the latest rise in the Consumer Prices Index.

Petrol inevitably played a role, too, being an essential requirement for some jobs and businesses. The pain of rising costs in that sector is inevitably exported to other sectors that rely on it. It looks likely to pump next month’s figure up, too. Ouch!

It’s true that the 9.1 per cent headline number – yet another 40-year high – represents only a small rise on last month. But that is before the impact of the expected rise in Ofgem’s price cap on domestic fuel bills.

All of which brings us full circle, to a Brexit that is infamously failing to deliver. Jacob Rees-Mogg was once reduced to asking Sun readers to tell him about its benefits, which is supposed to be part of his ministerial portfolio.

There has been a sense of “Don’t mention the war” about the economic consequences of the Tories’ signature policy.

Boris Johnson likes turning to Brexit when he’s trying to shore up his dwindling support, principally by threatening to tear up his “oven ready” deal – and thus potentially the Good Friday Agreement – over a Northern Ireland protocol that much of the North’s business community, and a substantial chunk of its population, wants to keep.

The paranoid fanatics to his right, and in the Conservative-supporting media, whisper darkly about “remoaner” plots while ignoring the fact that we have a Brexiteer government in power, with a sizeable majority to boot.

Part of the reason is the opposition’s fear of throwing the prime minister a bone on an issue on which he feels a degree of comfort.

However, there are recent tentative signs that this is changing. Voices beyond the usual suspects have begun to highlight the economic impact of Brexit. That’s welcome, because the great lie could do with more light being cast upon it.

The government also needs its feet holding to the fire over the inadequate support offered to those hit by the surging prices that its own policies have engendered. There will at least be plenty willing to do that.