‘Nobody is in charge’: Tory peer hits out at ministers over inflation
The veteran retailer Stuart Rose has urged the government to do more to shield the poorest from double-digit inflation, describing the lack of action as “horrifying”, with a prime minister “on shore leave” leaving a situation where “nobody is in charge”.
Responding to July’s 10.1% headline rate, the Conservative peer and Asda chair said: “We have been very, very slow in recognising this train coming down the tunnel and it’s run quite a lot of people over and we now have to deal with the aftermath of that.”
Attacking a lack of leadership while Boris Johnson is away on holiday, he said: “We’ve got to have some action. The captain of the ship is on shore leave, right, nobody’s in charge at the moment.”
Lord Rose, who is a former boss of Marks & Spencer, said action was needed to kill “pernicious” inflation, which “erodes wealth over time”. He dismissed claims by the prime ministerial candidate Liz Truss’s camp that it would be possible for the UK to grow its way out of the crisis.
Rose told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Nothing is happening, we are sitting here now into the second, third, fourth month into this crisis and we’re still waiting to see what action will be taken. It’s horrifying. I would like to see us looking after those who need it most.”
He said inflation was “going to be painful for everybody” and “picks on the poorest hardest, but we have to deal with it, we can’t ignore it”.
Warning that he believed interest rates would have to rise further to tackle rising prices, Rose said he believed the UK was “heading towards a recession”.
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Rose, who is backing Truss’s rival, Rishi Sunak, to
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