Cost-of-living crisis: ‘Some will go hungry. Some will be cold. Some will be both as we head into winter’

• FRIDAY’S headline in The Times said it all: “Britain slides into crisis”.

It was no exaggeration. The Bank of England is warning of a lengthy recession; price rises that will hit 13 per cent in the last three months of this year and average annual energy bills heading towards £3,300 by October.

What is needed is immediate action.

Former prime minister Gordon Brown called for an emergency budget in The Observer: “Boris Johnson, Sunak and Truss must this week agree an emergency budget.” If they refuse, he argued, parliament should be recalled to deal with the issue.

How right Brown was. This cannot be allowed to fester.

Yet our temporary PM was off sunning himself, apparently on holiday in Slovenia. His chancellor Nadhim Zahawi was also on holiday abroad.

Instead the Tories are locked in a ferocious fight to see who their next leader will be. Liz Truss is utterly incompetent, a minister whose remarks must endlessly be “reinterpreted” because they have been “misunderstood” even when they are direct quotes.

Rishi Sunak at least understands the issues. But he will forever be remembered as the man who boasted to Tunbridge Wells Tories that he had reversed Treasury formulas “that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas” so that comfortable areas like theirs could benefit.

It was an utterly heartless message from a man whose wealth insulates him from the reality so many now face.

The poor will have a miserable time in the months ahead. Some will go hungry. Some will be cold. Some will be both as we head into winter.

Yet Camden Council has lost 60 per cent of its funding in government cuts. Of course it will do everything it can, but resources only go so far.

I was so pleased that you highlighted this issue so clearly (Cost of living: Stretched charities bracing themselves for ‘the next crisis’, July 28). The Camden Advice Network is doing a great job, getting 20,000 people the unclaimed benefits they deserve.

And let’s stop calling them “handouts” as Truss does. Each of us pays tax, directly or indirectly.

We will all have to stand with our community in the months ahead. It will require generosity and imagination if we are to get through this crisis together.

MARTIN PLAUT, NW5