YouGov poll finds few people think PM deserves credit for falling rate, despite fact he made cutting inflation one of his five key priorities
Good morning. The second half of August is normally the worst time of the year for political news, because the summer media campaigns pre-cooked by the political parties (like small boats week) are running out of steam, but today we will at least be hearing from Rishi Sunak, who has a visit planned.
Much of the focus this morning will by on the sentencing of Lucy Letby. It is primarily a horrific crime story, but there are implications for government and this morning Claire Coutinho, the education minister who has been doing an interview round, has been defending the government’s decision not to make the inquiry into the case a statutory one (a non-statutory one would be quicker, she argued) and insisting that ministers do want to change the law to try to stop offenders like Letby not attending court for sentencing. We will be covering these developments in detail in a separate live blog on the Letby proceedings.
A YouGov poll for the Times found that only 8% of voters credited government policy for the fall in inflation, which dropped to 6.8% last month, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics last week.
More people, 17%, believe the Bank of England is responsible despite criticism of its response to high inflation. In June Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, blamed flaws in the Bank’s economic forecasting after it failed to get a grip on runaway inflation.
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