The prime minister and every cabinet minister have clearly been primed to claim at every juncture that it's not this country's fault, it's global, when challenged about the crisis that this country is facing. Well yes. But we are in a much worse state than many other countries because we have under-invested in the NHS for a decade, we've converted to a penal benefits system that has catapulted hundreds of thousands of people into food-bank poverty, we ignored all warnings about future pandemics years ago, we recklessly went ahead with brexit, we cruise along thinking that we don't have to train for skills because foreigners are happy to come here, allowing ruthless profiteering employers to drive down wages, and, well, in a nutshell, events always overtake us. We never see things coming. Oh, and the last time I looked into it we were the only country with queues at petrol pumps. So we lack the skills and we have low pay and we have millions on benefits facing a bleak winter and we have five-year waiting lists.

But what's this I hear? We are going to magic up a high-skill, high-wage workforce with minimal immigration! All I can say to that is that we've heard about the magic to come but we've heard nothing about the method. It's all words and no plan. He genuinely doesn't know what to do. He'd better start praying that we have a mild winter and no flu epidemic. And just wait 'til April when he'll have to lift the energy price cap by a few hundred quid for the millions of families already on their uppers with high rents, the sudden loss of twenty quid a week, inflation going through the roof, shortages on supermarket shelves...

Merry Christmas everybody!