You may only criticise Reeves if you opposed lockdown

And Mahmood’s performative cruelty

The volcanic hatred of Keir Starmer and this Labour government has become so vitriolic across society; not only in the press but across wide swathes of the public that even J’accuse is now concerned that it has become disproportionate.

At the risk of sounding like David Aaronovitch, I was shocked to hear my Uber driver ranting and raving about Starmer’s assault on farmers and pensioners in between his many boasts about his families tremendous wealth and extensive lands in Bangladesh. I was mostly focused on not falling into a dissociative coma so I failed to ask the question that should be asked of anybody who whinges about the increased tax burden - did you oppose Lockdown when it was going on?

It is extraordinary that former Tory Ministers, and indeed Tory journalists have the gall to whinge about Rachel Thieves increasing taxes four years they implemented and cheered on a lockdown costing some £500 billion quid. What on earth did you expect to happen? Rishi Sunak should be hiding in shame, not chiding his successors in the Times of London. Whilst it is true that Sunak did press against the worst excesses of lockdown during the pandemic, he also engineered one of the most expensive lockdowns in the world through the ludicrous furlough scheme. Where is his contrition for his actions?

This was always going to happen! Policy choices that the Tories made in 2020-21 meant that we will be crushed with wartime scale debt for the next thirty years, a bill that we accrued in order to save the lives of 20-30,000 elderly people. The Bank Of England is having to delay interest rate cuts until next Spring, despite growth falling to 0.1% of GDP, due to run on inflation from lockdown and the virtue-signalling sanctions on our own Gas imports from Russia. Both of these decisions had almost unanimous support from not only in the press, and in Parliament, but also millions of ‘normal people’ - who did not just enthusiastically tell YouGov that they strongly supported restrictions but also enforced lockdown by snitching on their neighbours and shouting at people for not wearing masks.

There are innovations which could relieve the debts which accrued in this time, as an example a one-off tax on private pensions, but these are politically impossible in our system. The cattle would start braying and stomping. Extremely mild cuts to spending, which Labour have already tried (winter fuel) also provoke hysteria across the political spectrum and in the public at large. The only option Reeves has to stop the fiscal situation deteriorating further is to raise taxes. At first she tried to do this the right way - a flat increase in income tax - but this was also torn to pieces by the press, so now we will have a smorgasbord of fiddles instead like more expensive milkshakes and more thieving from taxpayers in the South-East.