Rampant inflation breaks the status quo – no wonder the government is spooked | Andy Beckett

Soaring prices are familiar to older Britons. But their return could lead a fragile, divided country into uncharted territory

When a government pinches a key opposition policy it has spent months deriding, and which goes directly against its ideology, you know something pretty big is going on. The Tories' screeching U-turn over a windfall tax on energy companies in order to fund payments to ease" the cost of living crisis is in part a typically crude attempt to change the subject from Partygate. But it is also a more revealing signal: that the government has, belatedly, become very worried about the politics of inflation.

It is right to be. For a lot of voters, many of them Tories, high inflation is very frightening. Savings shrivel. Pay rises are rarely enough. Investing safely seems impossible. State benefits are even less sufficient than usual. Luxuries, small treats and even essentials become unaffordable. The whole process of personal enrichment promised by capitalism goes into reverse. The solidity of money - the basis for so much of our lives - is revealed as an illusion. It becomes clear that money can decay, like everything else.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist