Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill said that British people need to accept they are poorer “and stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices.”

Pill made the comments in an interview streamed on Tuesday on the “Beyond Unprecedented” podcast produced by Columbia law school.

He said: “If the cost of what you’re buying has gone up compared to what you’re selling, you’re going to be worse off …

“So somehow in the UK, someone needs to accept that they’re worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices, whether higher wages or passing the energy costs through on to customers.

“And what we’re facing now is that reluctance to accept that, yes, we’re all worse off, and we all have to take our share …

“Instead, [people] try and pass that cost on to one of our compatriots, and saying ‘we’ll be all right, but they will have to take our share too’.

“That pass the parcel game that’s going on here … that game is generating inflation, and that part of inflation can persist.”