Jeremy Hunt finally emerged from wherever he’s been hiding this morning. And it did not go well.
The chancellor - who has been keeping a low profile recently despite the ongoing economic crisis - “starred” in a government video on the soaring cost of living.
The cringey two minute clip, posted on the Treasury’s Twitter feed, shows Hunt ordering a coffee and then explaining why prices are high while it is brewing.
The video went up just minutes after it was confirmed inflation was 10.5% last month - more than five times higher than the government’s own target.
“I’m afraid coffee is getting more expensive,” Hunt says. “A year ago it would have been around £2.50, but now it’s gone up to nearly £3 a cup.”
The chancellor says the weekly food shop has gone up by around 16% compared to a year ago, and by even more for the poorest families.
“The pound in your pocket is worth less than it used to be,” Hunt says, before once again blaming Covid and the war in Ukraine for the cost of living crisis.
“All of that means that the price of a cup of coffee has gone up,” says the chancellor.
“People who transport coffee beans across the oceans have to pay more for their fuel. People who transport the coffee beans in the UK have to pay more. And the result is they have to put up the price of a cup of coffee, otherwise they lose money.”
Hunt then goes on to say what the government is doing to achieve its target of halving inflation by the end of the year - something economists say is going to happen anyway.
He says the government is spending “a lot of money” to bring down energy bills, and has taken “very difficult decisions to balance the nation’s books”.
Unsurprisingly, the Twitter and political reaction to the video has not been kind.
Many people pointed out that the chancellor had somehow forgotten to mention Brexit in his list of reasons why the UK economy is struggling.
And even Fraser Nelson, editor of the Conservative-leaning Spectator magazine, accused Hunt of misleading the public.
Lib Dem Treasury spokesperson Sarah Olney said: “The last thing families need right now is a Mr Bean-esque video from the same clueless party that crashed the economy and sent mortgage bills spiralling.
“What’s even more shocking is that Jeremy Hurt airbrushed one of the main causes of economic pain - Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget that resulted in the biggest tax hike for a generation. How is that supposed to help Britain with inflation?”
A Labour source said: “The chancellor’s ‘not me guv’ explainer misses out the fundamental fact that the British public have been so exposed to economic shocks and the energy crisis because of 13 years of Tory failure and his party’s chaos crashing the economy.
“This is about more than the price of coffee - it’s about people’s mortgages and energy bills going through the roof, their fears for the future, and the government having no plan to address this.”