Whenever cost of living comes up, Jeremy Cordeaux can recite the government’s reply from memory: we’ve given you tax cuts. On this week’s Court of Public Opinion, he did the arithmetic on that boast — and found it hollow.
Doing The Division
The strength of Jeremy’s point is its simplicity. A tax cut sounds generous in a press release. Reduced to what it actually delivers each day — sixty-two cents, on his figure — it becomes something a household can scarcely notice. What, he asked, can anyone do with sixty-two cents a day?
Against rising rents, groceries, insurance and power, it is a rounding error dressed as relief. And that gap between the announcement and the lived reality is exactly where, in his view, public trust drains away.
Swamped By The Fuel Decision
What made the boast ring especially false was the timing. In the same stretch, the government let fuel excise relief lapse and pushed the excise up with an indexed rise on top. Petrol, Jeremy reminded listeners, is a huge multiplier — it feeds into the price of nearly everything, because goods travel the country by truck.
So on one hand, sixty-two cents a day handed back. On the other, a fuel decision that lifts the cost of the entire trolley. Side by side, the “relief” is drowned by the new impost.
Revenue Before Households
For Jeremy, the contrast lays bare a priority. A government that truly cared about the cost of living would have kept the fuel discount rather than trumpeting a token cut. The choice it made instead tells him it is more interested in its own revenue than in the families doing it tough. He didn’t soften the language: these people, he said, are a disgrace.
Ask The Simple Question
The frustrating part, he conceded, is that the tax-cut line often lands regardless — because “we gave you a tax cut” sounds good and few people stop to divide it by 365. His job, as he sees it, is to do that division out loud. Reduce the boast to sixty-two cents a day, place it beside a fuel hike that ripples through the economy, and the picture flips — the relief shrinks to almost nothing, the new cost looms large.
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