Sir Keir Starmer has told his cabinet to slash the cost of living and “use every tool we have” so that families can “feel” lower prices “day in day out”. It is a new year’s policy resolution that certainly speaks to voters’ anxieties, but it is full of political risk.

The strategy certainly reflects voters’ gripes. In October polling from Ipsos, 57 per cent of Britons said the government was doing a bad job on living costs. More recent YouGov polling shows that Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters want the cost of living to be the government’s top priority for 2026.

Starmer is thus meeting voters where they are. While he cannot slash market prices by diktat, Labour’s friends at the IPPR think tank argue that by reducing a fare here, an administrative price there, or nudging out-of-pocket costs down by regulations, a declared “war on bills” at least shows the government is taking voters’ suffering seriously. Hence freezes on prescription charges and rail fares, and plans for rent tribunals. The hope is that these measures together create the impression of a government on the consumer’s side.

Bundle this with reminding voters that interest rates are falling and the government’s “fiscal responsibility” mitigates inflation risk, and Starmer hopes for political credit for any “disinflation” this year. “2026 is the year people start to feel the difference. In the weekly shop. In monthly bills. In pay packets that finally go further …” Labour tweeted on Tuesday.

Yet what if bringing attention to living costs is politically self-defeating? Inflation at 3.2 per cent remains well above the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. By emphasising an intent to bear down on prices, Starmer risks repeating Rishi Sunak’s mistake of implying that Downing Street, not the Bank of England, determines this price growth.

What’s more, evidence from both here and the US suggests it is not today’s inflation that is fuelling discontent. Weekly cash earnings have grown more quickly than consumer prices in both countries in the past 12 months. Yet voters are not celebrating improving affordability. President Trump has seen a steady decline in approval on inflation, while YouGov polling shows Keir Starmer has similar net favourability ratings to Hamas.

The explanation for this is simple. Over the past five years, UK consumer prices have risen roughly 28 per cent, more than three times the increase in the preceding five years. The overall price level is 18 per cent higher than it would have been had the Bank consistently hit its 2 per cent target. So rapid has this run-up in prices been that voters still suffer “sticker-price shock”. They find the prices they see hard to stomach and long to return to the 2020 price level.

Of course, that ain’t gonna happen. Nor should it. Engineering a sharp deflation by squeezing money to reverse the inflation burst would be destructive. The only sane route back to “feeling better off” is for incomes to rise faster than prices for long enough that the new price level feels manageable.

Until then, however, I suspect fiddling with a handful of marginal prices will not satisfy the underlying grievance. It certainly will not affect aggregate inflation. And if ministers lean too hard on controls, they will invite the usual consequences of price caps, like shortages, lower quality and black markets.

Labour might use “affordability” as a broader wrapper to push its supply-side agenda. Build more homes, unblock infrastructure and speed up energy projects and you might reduce the relative price of big-ticket items that voters obsess over. Yet even those gains would arrive slowly, and voters are evidently impatient.

The hard truth is that it will take a few years before the shock of recent inflation wears off. Until then, embracing affordability politics is perilous. Talk of slashing living costs sets a benchmark expectation that the government cannot meet.