Ministers can raise taxes if they come out fighting. But no one in this cowardly Labour government seems able

Clockwise from top Left: Tony Blair, George Osborne, Rachel Reeves, Gordon Brown Composite: Dan Chung/Christopher Thomond/The Guardian/Adam Vaughan/EPA/Jeff Overs/Getty Images

Scroll back three years. The person sitting opposite me is yet to take their place at the top of Keir Starmer’s government. Instead, they are a star of the Labour opposition, for whom power advances or recedes with every poll and front page. They have just done a spot of electoral marketing, a photo op at a supermarket 100 or so miles from Westminster, and what they’ve brought home is the politics of the staff.

“They’d all voted for Boris.”