Anyone observing the political debate about inflation in the UK could be forgiven for thinking that rising prices were being driven by rising wages. Politicians and technocrats from across the political spectrum have taken it upon themselves to chastise workers for demanding wage increases in line with inflation.

These calls for wage restraint were intolerable enough when they were coming from the head of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, who earns more than half a million pounds a year. Now Boris Johnson — who reportedly found it so hard to survive on a prime minister’s salary of £164,000 per year that he had to approach a Tory donor to buy him some new curtains — has entered the fray.

Johnson has warned of a “wage-price spiral” if workers do not temper their salary demands — as have several Conservative and even Labour MPs. Well-paid politicians who have repeatedly voted to increase their own salaries while holding down those of nurses and teachers are now telling the rest of the country not to ask for higher wages. The spectacle might be funny if it were not so elitist.