Starmer was asked to be honest to the public on Times Radio and state unequivocally if Labour would introduce new taxes in power. He said, when prompted with: “There are going to be no tax rises and no spending cuts under a Labour government?”

“Where there are tax rises, we have set out what they will be and what the money will be spent on.“

No additional tax rises under a Labour government – “where there are to be tax rises, we’ve set that out.” Starmer delivers his “Read my lips: no new taxes” moment before the manifesto launches next week. This is one to come back to…

If Starmer keeps to his pledge the public can be sure his government will be able to do almost nothing, and less than that in the long term. Charging VAT on private school fees will be cost-negative for the Treasury after one parliament. Hiking the Energy Profits Levy will destroy the oil and gas sector and lose revenue by the decade’s end. Hunt has gobbled the counter-productive non-dom policy. Pension pots are being drained in anticipation of a Labour lifetime allowance raid. The Tories’ one goal is to prove Starmer’s telling a fib…