I DON’T know, one minute you’re the furlough hero, you’ve given the nation the chance to build a gazebo, learn Mandarin and bake sourdough bread and the next you’re reputation’s toast.

My PR image would be entirely up in flames right now if only the critics could afford the petrol.

So, what have I done? Honestly. Just because you don’t increase Universal Credit in line with inflation and hundreds of thousands will fall into poverty, and food bank users are rejecting potatoes, because they can’t afford to cook them.

But are so many carbs good for you anyway? Wouldn’t a quick-heat tofu work? Jump on your Peloton and lose a few pounds, I say.

Look, it’s all very well you saying a windfall tax on the oil companies is called for. I know BP boss Bernard Looney – that is his real name, by the way – saw his pay more than double to £4.5m last year. And he admitted that higher oil prices had turned his company into a 'cash machine'.

But you can’t go around telling the oil companies to cut back on their reckless profiteering. This isn’t a socialist state. What we did however to help level up the petrol poor is drop a shilling from the price of a litre.

And since we allowed the five pence to be added on at the forecourts the night before, in that way everybody wins.

Look, I know what you’re thinking. “Richy, you’re a multi-millionaire Winchester-educated posh boy who’s further from reality than Ed Sheeran is of coming up with an entirely original song. And how can we grow an economy in which the average family will be around £1,000 worse off than last year?”

But we’re not that well off. My wife’s father is only the sixth richest man in India – not the fifth, as some journalists have claimed. And we’re having to watch our outgoings like everyone else.

We don’t have to have a pre-payment electric card for our new home in Yorkshire, but you can be sure we’ll be keeping an eye on the heating bill for the new swimming pool and gym centre. And we’ll be using a direct debit plan which always keeps us in credit, which is the same thing, isn’t it?

And consider this; if you choose to live in a house with fashionable high ceilings and big windows then your bank account is going to get a little drafty. And if you choose to live in Scotland with its separate, more expensive tax system, then whose fault is that?

Yes, I know this austerity budget has come in the wake of the government blowing five billion on Covid fraud and error. Yes, perhaps more than half of the extra money National Insurance payers will save, will go to the top half of earners.

But I’m not creating an Alice in Sunakland at all, as the tragically unimaginative Rachel Reeves’ protracted metaphor described me. I’m creating a new reality that works for me.

As imagined by Brian Beacom

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