UK inflation has risen to 3.5%, hitting the highest level in over a year – but Labour‘s Rachel Reeves continued to insist that Britain is better off than it was under the previous government. Talking on GB News this morning, she acknowledged: “The numbers today are clearly disappointing.

“We want to see the numbers coming down after the cost of living challenges that people have been through this last few years.” She continued: “Clearly we’re in a different place to where we were under the previous government where inflation got into the double digits, but inflation is still a challenge, which is why we increased the minimum living wage, giving a pay rise to three million people in April.” She added that Labour had also frozen fuel duty in the 2024 budget and rolled out free breakfast clubs in primary schools to help cash-strapped families.

However, viewers took to X and scathingly branded the Chancellor as “thick as two short planks”, as they made it clear they weren’t accepting her argument.

“As long as your energy policy is on the wrong track, which it is, plus piling on the failures and costs of the immigration policies, inflation and high unemployment will continue to be a given,” one wrote.

Another posted a clown emoji, exclaiming: “Imagine thinking your economy is going to do well under Labour!”

“She’s thick as two short planks. We were all waiting for this. People actually voted for these lunatics?” groaned a third.

One viewer even tried to start a hashtag trend under the name #Reeveflation – and while she branded the latest figures “disappointing”, someone shot back: “The disappointment is all ours pet.”

She’d insisted the government was “determined to go further and faster”, but critics pointed out that inflation was higher than originally predicted, with the Bank of England not expecting numbers to rise so catastrophically until late summer.

It comes just two days after after Keir Starmer was heavily criticised for his deal with the EU, which grants European fishermen access to British shores for 12 years.

A youth mobility scheme which is also currently under discussion could see up to 80 million EU citizens under 30 automatically receiving the right to live and work in the UK for three years – at a time when 620,000 English people under 25 are unemployed.

Elsewhere on today’s show, Eamonn Holmes had a shock fall, before regaining his composure but going on to lament that Angela Rayner was “squeezing every penny” out of people with extortionate taxes.