Sunak says he can’t help the cost of living crisis. What about these five simple steps?

theguardian.com:

Rishi Sunak has claimed there’s nothing he can do about the external global circumstances driving the cost of living crisis, but he’s dodged the real question: how can he best respond, and avoid an escalating crisis and a costly recession? In fact, there are fair, green solutions to this crisis staring us right in the face.

And they’re solutions that should get support from business. Over the past few days, the trickle of increasingly panicked messages from businesses on the cost of living crisis has become a flood. Already alarmed by the Bank of England’s warning of a looming recession and “apocalyptic” price rises, business leaders were spooked when Sunak’s speech at the CBI last week left many people wondering if he understood the scale of the challenge. At the weekend, the chief executive of E.On – a company not known for its economic radicalism – declared that “the most important thing is that the government intervenes” and the chancellor must “tax those with the broadest shoulders”.

Consumer spending drives the economy. If people are struggling to pay their gas bills, they have less money in their pockets to spend on the high street or a restaurant meal. Which is why, as the CBI’s director general, Tony Danker, has said, Sunak’s first step should be investing in social security via increases in universal credit and legacy benefits to prevent families falling into destitution. This would also help to stabilise the economy, not fuel inflation. Income tax cuts wouldn’t help here. They’d give a big bonus to the rich, but the poorest, already facing the choice between heating and eating, wouldn’t benefit at all.

Second, we need a serious industrial strategy to boost confidence, give long-term business certainty and restore