All those rows of houses, each with their own gardens. They are very nice - particularly so during lockdown - but there is no way one can say they are even relatively high density!

It is at once familiar and yet very foreign. I first visited in 2009 and found the British relics fascinating. There were still coins with the Queen’s head on circulating. But the scaffolding is all made of bamboo and you turn a corner and find a beautiful Chinese temple next to a skyscraper.

Instead, they go "huh, lots of people seem to be using salary sacrifice schemes, let's end those" because Labour seems determined not to try to change anything major – or even moderate – but instead is set on tinkering around the edges.

People voted in a Labour government by a landslide because they wanted something meaningful to change. Labour has, ever since securing that win, done everything in its power to signal it won't change anything very much.

But it isn’t that complicated. There’s just being bad at strategy (promising no tax rises), being bad at politics (not using the multiple opportunities fate gave them to break the promise) and being bad at comms (giving interviews sharply hinting at breaking the promise then chickening out).

It’s always tempting to suggest that “there’s more going on behind the scenes”, that it’s much more complicated, that mere mortals like us couldn’t possibly understand.

Been banging on about this for years.

As I said in 2017, “At some point, someone will have to tell those on middle incomes that they will have to pay more tax.”

flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/t...

New meme format just dropped: