In the US, where Donald Trump swept the board last week, it was the experience of sharply increasing essentials prices, from food to energy, that glued together the Republicans’ new electoral coalition. About 75% of those voting Republican reported that they had faced “hardship” or “severe hardship” as a result of price rises; only 25% of Democrats said the same. When Trump asked if Americans felt better now than they did four years ago, the answer for most was a clear no.

Price surges are having political impacts. In elections this year in three of the world’s largest economies, incumbent parties were hammered by voters angry about their helplessness in the face of the steeply rising cost of essentials.

In India, Narendra Modi, widely assumed to enjoy a total dominance of domestic politics in the world’s fastest growing major economy, lost his parliamentary majority. Food price inflation in the country has been running at an average of 8% for months, with the price of rice soaring to its highest point in a decade, despite a government export ban in July (which has subsequently been lifted). A quarter of voters cited price rises as their main concern, the highest since the early 1980s, and well over half thought the government had handled inflation badly.

In Japan, the conservative coalition, led by the Liberal Democratic party, lost its majority in a snap election. The price of rice had risen by 63% over the previous 12 months, the biggest increase since official records began, the result of the falling value of the yen pushing up imported fertiliser prices – and, crucially, the “brutal summer heatwave” that affected rice quality and shrank harvests. After decades of low inflation and its associated low wage rises, the sharp increase in the price of staple foods has been a rude........

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