Since I last wrote, Tory chaos continues. Braverman is gladly gone; Cameron bizarrely back. This week saw a hotchpotch of an Autumn Statement in which Jeremy Hunt fooled no-one. The Chancellor in fact lifted the lid on thirteen years of Conservative economic failure; we were told to expect an Autumn Statement for growth, yet growth has been revised down next year, the year after and the year after that too. Meanwhile, mortgages, prices, taxes, debt are all up. Everyone feels worse off, as I told Sky News.

What was laid bare in Hunt’s statement was the full scale of the damage that this government has done to our economy since 2010, and despite seem last ditch rabbits out of hats like National Insurance adjustments, nothing the Conservatives announcement will remotely compensate. Opening the debate in the House of Commons yesterday, I was clear that businesses have lost confidence in the Conservatives, and the public have lost patience with the Conservatives.

Let’s be honest, the Autumn Statement felt a bit like the season finale of this Conservative Government. While we might have been hoping for an uplifting twist in the tale, sadly what we were left with was a pitiful ending to an underwhelming story. It was a statement made of pure fantasy: the Government Benches cheering a tax cut, when in fact taxes are higher than they have ever been; a Chancellor claiming to have delivered for working people, when in reality living standards face an unprecedented fall; the Conservatives desperately trying to address business investment, when in fact their chaos was what caused business investment to collapse to begin with.

I understand that it is tempting for Conservatives to buy into the Chancellor’s fiction, but in the real world people can see the cost of the Conservatives in their bank balance, mortgage bill, high street and public services. When inflation went up after the invasion of Ukraine, the Government said, “It’s nothing to do with us; it’s all global pressures.” Now, when some of those pressures have reduced and the Bank of England has operated monetary policy in the way we would expect, the Prime Minister wants personal credit for inflation falling.

On inflation, the Government opposed the single most important thing they could do, which is to reduce our exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices so that we are never again so vulnerable and exposed. Labour has a plan for energy independence and security so that Britain is never again so badly exposed to those volatile fossil fuel prices. That is the lesson we need to learn.

Let us also not forget that, while we all welcome lower inflation, it is still high, particularly food inflation. When I do the big shop in my local supermarket in Stalybridge, I wince when I see the price of some food items. Families are working harder than ever before, only to have to put the little things that they treat themselves with back on the shelf, or to cut back on what they would once have considered essentials. This is no time for Conservative Ministers to go around asking for a pat on the back. The only way we can truly turn a corner on this litany of failure is with a Labour government.

You can watch a clip of my response in the House here or read my full speech here.