The pound in your pocket

The pound is slipping again. Inflation is above 3% for the first time in six years. Mrs May looks weaker and more unstable by the day. Two cabinet ministers recently resigned within days of each other. Inflation is still high, affecting food prices in particular.

GDP fell by 0.1% per capita this year. Mortgage approvals are down, investment is down. Is this the new normal, or just a blip? What is the outlook over the next few years?

Growth forecasts are being revised upwards for most rich countries - including the euro zone. Meanwhile UK growth has been revised downwards again, creeping up to only 1.3% in 2020. Even more of a concern is that even that 1.3% assumes that we will continue to have high levels of immigration and will remain in the single market. Neither seems likely right now.

So we need to tighten our belts. Consumer spending is at its lowest in five years, with a third of people expecting their finances to worsen. Five million households will be paying another £5 a month for their energy, as Ofgem raises the price cap by 5.5%. More and more families with at least one working member are now living in poverty - 8 million people at the last count. Put another way, that is 57% of all Britons who are living in poverty.

Austerity also means havinng to accept a shorter lifespan: Austerity kills people. 120,000 more people than expected died between 2010 and 2017 due to NHS cuts.

Mrs May hasn't fulfilled her promises to help the 'just about managing' (JAMs), instead they are quickly becoming the 'not quite managing' (TOAST). Instead of fighting the 'burning injustices' she has speechified about, she is making them worse. Her board of social mobility commissioners have recently resigned en masse - every member - because all they hear from the government is rhetoric and they see no action being taken.

We still don't know how leaving the EU will affect the economy in detail, even after the government was forced to release its studies. After much dragging of feet Mr Davis finally released them - admitting that his department had spent three weeks blacking out all "market and negotiation-sensitive information".

Studies by pro-Brexit economists assume other countries will give us everything we want and that extreme policies can be imposed in the UK without a parliamentary approval. It is telling that their favoured model is authoritarian Singapore.

The only reasonable predictions we have say the economy is going to suffer a long-term loss of growth no matter how leaving is managed, while the IMF expect the pound to drop another 15% if we don't sort the details out pronto, with the pound likely to fall to parity with the euro.

The good news is that the EU no longer worry that we will slash taxes and regulations in an attempt to win trade.

We can't afford to.