“You name it, Labour will tax it,” tweeted Rishi Sunak, just two days before leading the Conservatives to a monumental trouncing. It was a frequent attack line from his party. The problem, however, isn’t that Labour’s tax and spend plans are too extreme — it’s that they don’t go anywhere near far enough.

Britain desperately needs the “decade of national renewal” Keir Starmer has promised, but the biggest obstacle to that is what Labour is promising not to do: comprehensively reform the tax system to fund a whole-of-government program to secure and rebuild Britain.

We have public health, crime, and housing crises that can be attributed squarely to the unprecedented increase in poverty and inequality since the global financial crisis. School ceilings are literally crumbling, our transport system is both expensive and unreliable, private water companies are de facto bankrupt, and the vast majority of councils will need bailing out over the next parliament. Fundamentally, the failure to invest imposes enormous costs on services and the country as a whole.