As I pointed out in business questions this week, the chancellor’s mask has slipped following his autumn statement and his baleful plan for Britain’s future has become clear.
He has failed every test and broken every promise he made on the economy. He hoped we would not notice the choice he has made to cut public spending to 35 per cent of GDP. This would take us back to levels reminiscent of the 1930s before we had the NHS or a social safety net.
In the week when we were reminded that four million people in our country are at risk of going hungry, it seems that the Tory solution is to blame the victims and tell those who cannot afford to feed their families that they do not know how to cook.
We all know that the real problem is low wages and in work poverty.
Instead of the Tories’ ideological obsession with destroying sixty years of social progress what we really need is a fair and balanced deficit reduction programme which combines common sense savings with an effective growth strategy.
The autumn statement appears to have had a peculiar effect on the Liberal Democrats.
The business secretary told the cabinet it was ‘excellent’, with Liberal Democrat ‘fingerprints all over it’ before getting others to brief the papers that he really thinks that the cuts just ‘aren’t achievable’.
The chief secretary to the treasury happily signed it off as a member of the quad, but then called it ‘a mix of unfunded tax promises, harsh spending plans and pandering to Ukip’.
And the deputy prime minister has said he was proud of the autumn statement, but was so desperate to distance himself from it that he fled three hundred miles to Lands’ End.
We are all used to celebrities having ‘showmances’ to make the front page of Hello magazine, but this must be the first time in history that two partners have attempted a ‘showvorce’.
They are leaking lurid details of their rows to the papers. They have moved in to separate rooms in number ten so they can spin against each other. They have even resorted to maso-sadism. Inflicting pain on each other whilst also inflicting pain on themselves.
The Liberal Democrats must think we have all fallen off a Christmas tree. Their cynical choreography has now reached such ridiculous levels that I am told they are forming a cabinet within a cabinet to shadow their own government’s cabinet, and I bet there are still no women in it.
It is less candy crush and more like parliamentary zombie apocalypse.
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Angela Eagle is member of parliament for Wallasey, shadow leader of the House of Commons and writes the weekly Business of Parliament column for Progress. She tweets @AngelaEagle
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