Last week, just days before Christmas, the Tories announced a brutal 3.8% rail fare hike for millions of passengers.
As Mirror readers know, families are already facing real pain this Christmas with soaring bills and tax hikes soon to hit them, and many are fearful for their livelihoods with the new wave of Omicron.
Rather than address these fears and the crisis in living standards, the Chancellor flew off to California, while ministers here at home cooked up a plan to hike up fares for millions next year.
It has never been as clear - this government is staggeringly out of touch.
A Prime Minister unfit to lead our country, and utterly oblivious to the pain facing millions this winter.
And as the Mirror reveals today, under the Tories the cost of travelling to see friends and family for Christmas has shot up.
Bus fares have risen three times faster than pay. Petrol is up almost third in the last year alone to the highest price on record. And the Conservatives have jacked up rail fares by twice as fast as wages.
Incredibly, the rail minister had the cheek to say this was “fair”. Just like with the Downing Street parties, they’re trying to take people for fools.
Many will wonder what planet ministers live on if they think people can afford such a hike in bills when wages are not keeping pace.
And they will find it insulting that while they are being forced to spend money they can ill-afford, the Tories dish out billions in dodgy contracts to their friends and donors.
The Conservatives quite simply have the wrong priorities for this country.
Labour would do things differently. It’s not right that costs are not kept low. Prices such as rail fares are in the direct control of government yet they whack them up every year for the millions of people that rely on them.
We’d help people now by cutting VAT on household heating bills over winter, we’d freeze business rates, and we wouldn’t be hitting people with a National Insurance rise at the worst possible time.
And as we face the new wave of Omicron, rather than going into hiding, we’ve been demanding that ministers provide targeted support for business and workers in the hardest-hit sectors, urgently fix the scandal of sick pay, and take action to ease the burden of business rates.
These are serious times for our country, people deserve better than this chaotic, untrustworthy Prime Minister. They deserve a government that will put them first.
