The Bank of England’s top economist is passing the buck on the U.K.’s inflation to the working class. During an appearance on the Beyond Unprecedented podcast from Columbia Law School, Huw Pill said British people need to accept that they’re poorer, as pay raises will only increase the cost of goods and services. “Somehow in the U.K., someone needs to accept that they’re worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices, whether through higher wages or passing energy costs on to customers etc.,” Pill said. “What we’re facing now is that reluctance to accept that, yes, we’re all worse off.” Thomas Moore, senior investment director at Abrdn, told the BBC that Pill is playing the blame game. Moore said the Bank of England exec, whose job it is to regulate inflation, was cherry-picking evidence and saying “don’t blame us, look at these one-offs and actually, we need you to help us to get [inflation] down to 2 percent.” Inflation in the U.K. was 10.1 percent in March.
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