Keir Starmer’s U-turns – from the retreat on farmland inheritance tax just before Christmas to winter fuel payments and disability benefit cuts – will not stop in 2026. In fact, they are likely to get worse.

Why? Fundamentally, it’s because Labour’s 2024 manifesto was a work of fiction. But in Government you have to face reality.

That manifesto was a communications strategy, not a programme for how to run the country. It was designed to offer limited policies and avoid any hint of tax rises in order to make Labour harder to attack. Manifestos, though, are meant to set out your plan for what you would do in power.

Labour pretended it could improve public services and make society fairer without raising taxes. That was a lie – and everyone with any policy knowledge, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies to little old me, was saying so at the time.

This was a strategic mistake for two reasons. Firstly, public feeling was so strongly against the Tories, there was little risk of Labour losing that election. Secondly, it has resulted in the mess that is also known as Labour’s first 18 months in power. Reality has hit, leaving ministers desperately scrabbling around for the very policies they should have been........

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