The spectre of price controls is back to spook Sunak – and Thatcherite myths won’t save him

‘Rishi Sunak is oddly out of place, facing the wrong way as the eager young keeper of a dying flame.’ Photograph: Jessica Taylor/UK PARLIAMENT/AFP/Getty Images

Even if you don’t call it “price control” (and Downing Street would prefer that you don’t), asking supermarkets to limit the cost of basic goods is an extraordinary thing for a Conservative government to contemplate.

It may not happen. If it does, it will be voluntary, say ministers – just a nudge to retailers, so they keep the cost of living down. Definitely not the sort of thing that was last attempted 50 years ago, under a weak Tory prime minister struggling to control inflation, while grappling with strikes and sliding towards election defeat. Nothing like that at all.