Hello and we're delighted to the spiked podcast

I'm Fraser Meyers and with me this week we have spiked columnist Ella Wielin

Hi.

And we're delighted to introduce special guest spike columnist Luke Gettos.

Hello.

Coming up on the show, The Cost of Living Crisis, the two-year anniversary of lockdown, and the Supreme Court

nominee who can't define the word woman.

So Chancellor Rishi Sunak delivered his spring statement earlier this week, amid one of the worst cost of living crises for generations.

Inflation is soaring, energy prices are out of control and economic growth is slowing.

Ella, what did you make of the Chancellor's response to this?

Well, it's much like any other previous Chancellor has responded in relation to

rolling series of crises we've seen over recent years and decades, which is a kind of, you know, mix between and doing everything I can and also sort of a defeated hands in pockets is not really that much I can do.

It strikes me that the narrative of the way in which Richusunak has spun the, you know, the obvious and everyone accepts this difficulties that we face in the

current moment no I'm not for one second trying to pretend that the job isn't

difficult you know Russia has invaded Ukraine that's had a knock on effect

we've had two years of a pandemic blah blah blah there's a lot of stuff he's got to deal with

but it struck me that it was very like previous discussions about austerity and the need for belt tightening in which governments

pretend that I will let themselves off the hook by suggesting that sort of world events or

you know whether it's financial crashes in other countries

or or things going on in stock markets or wars or whatever it has happened and we just

can't really we don't have a lot of room to maneuver and that's an

that's an excuse sure the UK didn't decide that Russia was going to invade Ukraine

...