Food campaigner Jack Monroe has hit out at the labelling of the cost-of-living crisis – arguing the squeeze on household budgets has been happening for more than a decade and not simply “fallen out of a clear blue sky”.
The popular budget chef, appearing on BBC Question Time on Thursday, argued the problems stem from Conservative austerity and 13 years of “pulverizing” public services that “propped up the fundamentals of a decent society”.
The writer, challenging the view difficulties have emerged largely as a result of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, added the issues have been given a “fancy title” now that they are “affecting the chattering classes, the middle classes, the media classes”.
It comes as the UK battles with stubbornly high inflation amid soaring use of food banks, families stealing formula milk to feed babies and mortgage rates spiralling among a series of issues pounding families.
Monroe was responding to a question from the audience in Leicester on when people can start to feel “better off”.
She said: “We’ve been hearing a lot over the last year-and-a-half now about the cost of living crisis, as though it’s fallen out of a clear blue sky.
“It’s not a cost of living crisis – let’s be absolutely clear – although it is for everybody at the sharp end of it and that’s millions and millions of people ... it’s a cost of Conservatives crisis. It’s a cost of austerity crisis. It’s a cost of 13 years of pulverizing all social support and all of those safety nets we used to have in place that propped up the fundamentals of a decent society.
“It’s the cost of stripping out the NHS and social care and refuges and welfare and all the support that many, many people and voters might have thought they never would have needed ... they didn’t think that they were going to ever be one of those people who would have to dip into those parts.
“And now that it’s affecting the chattering classes, the middle classes, the media classes, it’s been given a fancy title: the cost-of-living crisis. And it’s affecting almost everybody.”
Admitting she could not answer the question, she added: “I’ve been working with food banks and with people in poverty for the last 10 years.
“I’ve never known anything like the sheer scale of desperation and crisis that we’re facing at the moment as a country and the only thing that is going to change it is investment back into all of those services that have been stripped away and making sure that when people find themselves in a desperate situation that there’s some help and some support out there for them.
“And I hope for your sake and everybody else’s sake that that happens yesterday, but certainly sooner rather than later.”