There was a neat piece in the latest issue of Private Eye, out last week. There frequently is, of course. This one opened up thus: “A bombshell poll has revealed that if an election was held today, which it won’t be, Labour would lose lots of their seats and there might even be a hung parliament, although there won’t be one, because there will not be an election today. If the election did happen, which it won’t for another four and a half years…”

Well, I’d say not before autumn 2028 at the earliest. I presume this spoof was based on a poll in the Daily Mail which was headlined ‘Keir Starmer will be out of No 10 within a year, poll predicts’. In fact the poll showed that 33% of the people surveyed thought that, meaning twice as many did not. Remarkably, given the headline, 30% of those polled thought Labour should be in government versus 23% for the Tories and 22% for Reform. So what’s going on?

The government’s economic performance has been taking substantial criticism of late, and it’s important to keep the people in these sort of offices placated

Mostly, concern about the impact of the fiscal measures announced by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves (she’s pictured on the home page), in her first budget last autumn. Having tied herself in knots pre the election by ruling our increases in income tax, VAT and employees’ national insurance contributions, she had little room left in which to deal with the parlous state of the nation’s economy which the much-respected Institute for Fiscal Studies had told everyone beforehand that both the Conservatives and Labour were in denial about. It seems they were right. Given the flak she has copped for possibly causing further damage to any prospects for growth – example, the Financial Times: “Placing the bulk of the higher tax burden on employers was misguided” – by her decision to raise employers’ national insurance contributions, which has fed the narrative that despite her denials she has in general increased the tax burden, she might have been better off simply slamming a penny on income tax – ‘in for a penny’ and all that indeed. She would certainly have raised far more money that way. It won’t overly bother her that a common putdown on social media is to call her ‘Rachel Thieves’ but the perception that she hadn’t been wholly straight with the public might.

But is the criticism fair? The FT (again!) headlined a recent leader ‘Britain’s economic gloom is overdone’, pointing out that Labour’s large majority offers some security to investors, the UK is predicted to outgrow both France and Germany this year, and the UK’s strength in financial services means it is less vulnerable than most economies to whatever caprices Donald Trump serves up after he becomes present on Monday.

But with the cost of UK borrowing at a 30-year high and the pound at a 14-month low, Reeves may not be able to wait until her ‘spring forecast’ on March 26 to announce changes, likely cuts to the public finances. She is not, at least yet, in a Liz Truss-style ‘doom loop’, but things could get rocky.