When £100 buys half a basket of shopping, it’s no mystery why young people feel Britain is rigged against them

But instead of going back to his van to fetch another crate of groceries, he hands over his little tablet for me to sign to acknowledge I’m happy with my delivery.

I am not happy with my delivery. Where’s the rest of it? £100 must buy more than this.

You don’t hear quite as much about the cost-of-living crisis now.

Gone (for the moment, at least) are the dark days of double-digit inflation. So why does my weekly shop cost as much as my first car?

Well, inflation may be slowing, but it’s not falling. In fact, the ever-increasing price of food is one of the key factors keeping inflation stubbornly above the Bank of England’s 2% target.

In August, when overall inflation was 3.8%, food inflation stood at 5.1%

And when you add these recent, not insignificant, hikes in the price of food to the astronomical leaps of nearly 20% seen at certain points over the last five years, it’s not surprising our purses are feeling the pain.

Indeed, food prices in the UK have climbed by nearly 40% since August 2020. To put that in context, in the preceding five years, they rose by less than 5%.

The soaring price of food is even more dispiriting for asset-poor under-40s, also battling skyrocketing rent and transport costs.

A report by think tank the Fairness Foundation found that Gen Z and young millennials are facing lower wages and poor health in later life because - unlike their homeowning predecessors - their opportunities are limited by the fact that their debts outweigh their assets.

So how do we help them by at least tackling spiralling food costs? It’s easy for the powers that be to blame factors outside their control – Trump’s tariffs, the war in Ukraine, rising commodity prices etc. Easy, but certainly not the full picture.

Pretending that raising national insurance contributions for businesses didn’t affect the “working people” politicians seem so keen to charm is disingenuous.

Just because it wasn’t a direct tax on workers doesn’t mean they haven’t felt the pain. Similarly, the costs associated with policies around packaging and energy were always going to be passed on to shoppers.

And again, it’s too easy to blame “greedy supermarkets” for rising prices. In fact, to secure a consistent supply of reasonably priced, safe food, the sector arguably needs to boost profitability so it can meet regulatory and market demands.

So what’s the answer? Well, certainly not a room full of out-of-touch politicians waving flags trying to convince us that they’re just like us, while unwittingly betraying their contempt for “working people” by warning against “grievance politics”.

People have a right to feel aggrieved when a family bag of M&Ms is going to set them back a fiver.

What we need is a comprehensive, long-term strategy for food. Until that happens, working people will continue to feel short-changed.

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Rebecca Routledge is head of content at Money Wellness, an organisation commissioned by the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS)

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