In the theatre of the absurd, Donald Trump has once again taken centre stage. As the cost of living crisis tightens its grip on working families, the former president has described inflation as ‘beautiful’. This is not satire. This is the language of a man who has never queued at a food bank.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the UK Treasury is quietly issuing warnings about sterling volatility. Two worlds. Two realities. One is a performance. The other is the quiet dread of a nation watching its purchasing power evaporate.
The human cost of this ‘beautiful’ inflation is written in the small decisions people now make. The choice between heating and eating. The cancelled holidays. The adult children still living at home because rent has become a fantasy. These are not abstract economic indicators. They are the texture of daily life.
Trump’s remarks are a masterclass in detachment. For his base, perhaps, it plays as confidence. But for the millions who see their wages eaten by rising prices, it is a slap. Meanwhile, the Treasury’s concern over sterling volatility is the bureaucratic translation of a very real fear: that the pound’s weakness will import more inflation, making everything from bread to petrol more expensive.
There is a cultural shift happening beneath the headlines. The post-war assumption that each generation would be better off than the last is crumbling. Young people today do not expect to own homes. They expect to rent forever. They expect to work longer. They expect less. And yet the political class continues to speak in abstractions.
What is needed is not beautiful inflation or volatile sterling. What is needed is a reckoning with the human scale of this crisis. We need politicians who understand that economics is not a game of rhetoric but of lived experience. Until then, the gap between the stage and the street will only widen.
This is not a column about left or right. It is about truth. The truth that when a former president calls inflation beautiful, he is not speaking for the people. He is speaking from a bubble so insulated that the noise of ordinary struggle cannot penetrate. And when the Treasury warns of volatility, it is the bureaucratic equivalent of a quiet panic.
The real story is not the numbers. It is the faces behind them. The mother who skips meals. The father who takes a second job. The graduate who cannot move out. That is the cost. And it is not beautiful. It is devastating.
