Britain's cost-of-living crisis is “going to get worse”, Boris Johnson admitted tonight.
The Prime Minister said soaring bills are already the biggest issue for Brits - who he confessed this week face choices between heating and food.
Yet he told GB News : “It’s going to get more difficult”.
Inflation is set to peak near 9% later this year and energy bills, which have already shot up by £693 a year on April 1, are set to rise again in October.
Told “it’s going to get worse”, Mr Johnson replied: “It is yes, it is. And then it will get better. Yeah.”
Yet he refused calls from his interviewers - husband and wife Tory MPs Philip Davies and Esther McVey - to cut VAT on fuel or cancel his 1.25-point National Insurance hike that hit on April 6.
The Prime Minister pointed out he will be raising thresholds for paying National Insurance from July, which will cancel out the hike for most people earning less than £37,000.
But at the same time he is freezing income tax payment thresholds in a ‘stealth tax’ that will bit harder as time goes on.
Gesturing at a portrait of Margaret Thatcher, he proclaimed: “At times of difficulty Mrs Thatcher had state spending running very, very high as a proportion of GDP because of economic difficulties that the country was in.
“So something like Covid I think she would have dealt with in the exact same way.”
He claimed the NICs threshold change was “literally the biggest tax cut in the last 10 years”, despite the tax burden hitting its highest in decades and families suffering the biggest drop in real disposable incomes since records began in the 1950s.
Earlier this week the PM admitted the poorest families will face a choice between heating and eating under his government.
Yet he added he had "absolutely no problem" with imposing manifesto-busting tax hikes as Brits face soaring energy bills, higher prices and rising inflation.
He was asked by Sky News: "What would you say to families trying to make ends meet? Buy cheaper food? Don’t replace clothes? Turn down the thermostat or turn it off altogether? What should people do?”
The Prime Minister replied: “People obviously are going to face choices that they are going to have to make.
“We in the Government will do everything that we can to help.”
But he defended his National Insurance hike from today. Speaking on a visit to a hospital in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, he said: “I’ve got absolutely no problem with it. We’ve got to do the difficult things."
