Illustration by John Sadler www.johnsadlerillustration.com

• ONCE again we are shepherded into a blind alley of political discourse by endless heated but sterile arguments about the definition of “working people” as a category of voters who were promised by the Labour Party that their taxes would not rise under their party’s government.

“Am I not a working person?” huff a legion of happily discontented folk who face a tax hike.

Sir Keir Starmer has “insulted the working class” claims a well-heeled person in the Daily Telegraph who in normal times might be profoundly offended to be categorised as proletarian.

The reality is that the wealth in our proud country is so unevenly spread that everybody feels hard done by – even, apparently, those billionaires whose patriotic solution seems to be to leave the rest of us to stew in our own juice.

More funds are needed to rescue our services from the impoverishment bequeathed by governments since 1979 while they banged on about “hard-working families”.

My Uncle Colin barely did a day’s real toil in his life, though he always moaned about how hard his job was.

Can I suggest a solution might be to follow the old adage: “To each according to their needs, from each according to their ability”? And apply it to Uncle Colin and the billionaires alike?

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED