The UK’s inflation rate rose “for the first time in five months” in December 2025 – and, it rose more than many economists thought it would. Food was a key driving factor behind this rise. So it’s important to stress the role that ‘greedflation‘, ‘warflation‘, and ‘climateflation‘ have played, and why the Labour government is unlikely to fix the real problem.
Inflation means that, if our wages don’t rise too, our money buys us less. And when food is part of the equation, that can hit everyone hard.
As the BBC explains:
A 4.5% rise in the price of food and non-alcoholic drinks was mainly due to bread, cereals and vegetables.
While ordinary people have continued to feel the pressure as a result, though, Labour is no closer to tackling the misanthropic corporate profiteering behind it.
- Greedflation
In Europe, corporate profits have been a key driver of post-pandemic inflation. And that is likely to be true in the UK too. So while there are also cost increases, greedy corporations are milking it to increase their own wealth at the same time.
With prices rising as wages stay the same, the system is essentially enabling a transfer of money from ordinary people to corporations. So unsurprisingly, as Oxfam said on 19 January:
In the UK, the richest 56 people now hold more wealth than 27 million combined
UK billionaires’ wealth grew by £11bn in 2025, which was:
five times faster than inflation-adjusted earnings.
In this situation, the UK government could (and should) be pushing for public ownership of key sectors of the economy to stop the profiteering at our expense. It could (and should) also increase investment to help lower agricultural costs and food prices.
But instead, Labour is pushing public money into research that will lead to private profits for already-obscenely-wealthy individuals, without taking a logical cut for ordinary taxpayers. In short, it’s pandering to the rich, and taking from the rest of us to do so.
- Warflation
Another factor affecting food costs has been the international failure to prevent escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which led to the 2022 Russian invasion and the devastating war that continues to this day (which the West seems to have little interest in ending).
Ukraine was a key supplier of grain exports. And the disruption of that supply has shaken the world. Russia, meanwhile, was a key supplier of energy to Europe. So rising prices on that front indirectly affected food prices too.
Misanthropic arms dealers are loving all this, though. The war in Ukraine has been great for profits, as European nations seek to modernise and expand their arsenals. And in the UK, Labour is part of this push.
Labour got millions in donations from dodgy people profiting from the arms trade. So unsurprisingly, it has sought to please arms profiteers while neglecting ordinary people. And Ukraine seems to be a particularly lucrative market.
- Climateflation
Labour’s donors also have interests in the fossil-fuel industry. So the government’s lukewarm sentiment about climate breakdown is, again, unsurprising. But that doesn’t mean we’ll avoid highlighting the effect climate change has had on our food costs.
The fact is that the UK has faced years of extreme weather (from heatwaves and drought to record levels of rainfall), which have a strong connection to the climate crisis. And this weather has badly hurt harvests.
Corporate greed, meanwhile, remains a key driver behind the destruction of our planet. Inflation doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
We need a radical overhaul
Unemployment in the UK is rising (it’s at “a four-year high”) and wage growth is slowing. Global markets, meanwhile, aren’t stable because the US is openly destroying international norms (from backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza to abducting presidents and threatening allies) and throwing tariff threats around like confetti.
Labour isn’t challenging any of that in any meaningful way. And its main opponent Reform is even more in the pockets of Trump and the corporate interests destroying our planet.
Radical change is the only way out of this. So we urgently need to take power away from the billionaire class and empower ordinary people. We need to stop the march to war. And we need to invest in a future that doesn’t destroy the planet. Nothing less will do.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
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