22 April
Dear Boris Johnson,
The cost of living crisis is spiralling out of control in the UK. Your time in power has coincided with the entirety of my adult life, and I have spent that adulthood watching my country become a steadily more difficult place to attain even the most basic standard of living.
There are currently more food banks in the UK than McDonalds outlets. Figures from Statista show that in the year 2020/21, approximately 2.5 million people used a food bank in the United Kingdom, representing an increase in over 600,000 compared to the previous year. The number of food bank users in the UK during the year 2008/09 was estimated to be 26,000. I am sure you would blame some of this on the Covid-19 pandemic, but your government is responsible for its people in times of crisis as well as tranquility, and your failure to alleviate the poverty caused by the pandemic is a further indictment of your policies. Furthermore, this increase in food bank users was already happening under your administration prior to the pandemic, and has been steady in its betrayal of the damage that your government has done to the working people of Britain for over a decade.
Your failed energy strategy pushed millions into fuel poverty overnight, forcing them to choose between heating and eating — a choice you could never imagine having to make. This is combined with the ever-increasing house prices that your government also refuses to address. There is unarguably a cost of living crisis in this country, and your government needs to act now or risk hampering our economic growth and social mobility for years to come. The changes you have been making for over 10 years do not represent an evidence-based approach to policy, they are an ideological attack on the working class, and I urge you to stop now. The people of Britain cannot afford your policies. They cannot afford your government.
You need to lower taxes. Specifically you must lower National Insurance, and allocate more central government funding to local councils in order that they can deliver their services without raising council tax for their constituents yet again. You must raise the non-taxable threshold so that the poorest are not taxed while they are struggling to afford basic necessities. Then, you must overhaul UK energy policy to ensure that it supports individual people rather than large corporations — we need an effective price cap, as energy companies are currently taking bigger profits than ever while many people struggle to heat their homes. Tax these companies and the very richest of our society to pay for public services, not struggling people.
Your government is borrowing money from our future. This cost of living crisis is a ticking time bomb and we must address it now in order that we have a better economy in years to come. These policies are not just having an impact on my pocket and the pockets of other working-age people — they are affecting the next generation. Children cannot grow up into adults that fulfil their potential if they are cold, hungry, and living in unstable conditions. There are an estimated 2.8 million children living in poverty in the UK now, and these are the children that should be growing into the next generation of British society, economy and culture.
We have to act now to change the way that the tax burden is distributed across society, and change how energy policy is administered. Listen to the British public — we are broke and need change.
Yours sincerely,
Eleanor
Eleanor
Eleanor