Even Keir Starmer’s government wouldn’t be able to get out of this one. Even Labour couldn’t pretend it wasn’t a broken manifesto promise of blatant, grotesque proportions. Even this hapless, hopeless, deceitful government would find no plausible excuse. Because if reports are to be believed, Rachel Reeves is planning on abandoning a key election promise, a guarantee even, not to raise income tax. And if she goes ahead and raises the basic rate of income tax, it would be the first such raise for half a century. Guess who was responsible for that one? Yup. Got it in one. Labour.

Now, okay, breaking promises, or finding obfuscatory, weasel words to excuse them, comes naturally to this government. Smash the gangs? How’s that one going, then? Reduce energy bills? Ditto. No rise in national insurance? What a whopper. Govern in the national, not party, interest? Stop sniggering please.

But a rise in income tax would, if it goes ahead, be the biggest broken promise of the lot. And what will Reeves and Starmer say? They’ll blame Brexit. Strange that they didn’t do that before the election, isn’t it?

Strange that they didn’t say to us before the election, with all those “change” posters behind Keir Starmer, “well, we’d like to keep taxes where they are, but sadly Brexit makes that impossible”.

Of course, they said no such thing. Because they were hellbent on power at any costs, no matter how many millions of people they deceived in the process. They didn’t care how much they over-promised by a country mile.