How Chancellors love jacking up the minimum wage, as John Healey has just done in his Budget, by 3.9 per cent. Look, here’s a pay rise on me, he is saying, and it doesn’t even require a penny on tax to pay for it.

Left-wing economists have a word for it: ‘predistribution’, which means trying to achieve economic equality without having to tax and spend (not that there aren’t also numerous benefits on offer the poor as well).

Look, here’s a pay rise on me, Healey is saying, and it doesn’t even require a penny on tax to pay for it

Look, here’s a pay rise on me, Healey is saying, and it doesn’t even require a penny on tax to pay for it

It isn’t just Labour Chancellors who have fallen for the lure of increasing the minimum wage, but Tory ones, too. That is why, following Healey’s latest move, we will have a National Living Wage (for the over 21s) of £13.20 per hour and a National Minimum Wage (for 18-20 year olds) of £11.27 per hour. This is nearly twice the level the minimum wage would have been had it simply increased with inflation since it was........

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