This Labour government is so inept, it hasn’t even mastered the ancient political art of telling porkies. Or maybe PM Keir Starmer views voters with such contempt that he feels he can say whatever he likes and we’ll swallow it. Most likely, it’s both.

During the election, Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves built their campaign on one giant falsehood: that they wouldn’t hike taxes on “working people”. Anyone who swallowed that earned the party’s contempt, because it was plainly untrue.

Within weeks of Labour’s landslide, Starmer admitted the Budget would be “painful” and involve “big asks” of the public. But he repeated a key manifesto pledge not to raise National Insurance, income tax or VAT. So did Reeves.

Speculation swirled over which taxes would rise instead, such as inheritance tax, capital gains tax and stamp duty. In the end, Reeves tightened all three. Then added a fourth: a massive £25billion hike to employer’s National Insurance.

It’s been a disaster. Thousands of struggling firms have since gone under. Others have frozen recruitment or cut staff to survive.

An estimated 276,000 jobs have been destroyed since October, with another 100,000 expected to go by year end.

But Reeves doesn’t break a manifesto pledge so that’s okay. Except she did.

The Office for Budget Responsibility, set up to “offer impartial scrutiny of the government’s fiscal plans”, wasn’t going to swallow her nonsense. It calculated that the NI hike will ultimately hit workers hardest, with 60% of the extra cost passed on in lower wages and higher prices in the first year.

Over time, that would rise 76%.

That demolished Labour’s line that it hasn’t targeted “working people”. In fact, Reeves smashed them to the tune of £19billion.

So what did the Labour manifesto actually say? Here’s the pledge: “Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.”

So how does the party justify this sleight of hand? By lying. Blatantly.

Today, Reeves is targeting inheritance tax. This hits working people too, since most wealth is earned over a lifetime’s graft.

But here’s the twist. In defending her position, a Treasury spokesperson told the Express: “We are committed to keeping taxes for working people as low as possible, which is why at last autumn’s Budget we protected working people’s payslips and kept our promise not to raise the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax, employee national insurance or VAT.”

I can see two huge changes from the manifesto here.

First, the line “Labour will not increase taxes on working people” has been replaced by a softer manifesto pledge to keep taxes “as low as possible”.

There’s a world of difference between “not increasing taxes” and keeping them “as low as possible”.

Second, the manifesto line “we will not increase National Insurance” has been fiddled to “we kept our promise not to raise… employee national insurance”.

Now that’s a whopper. It’s weapons-grade dishonesty. The manifesto didn’t draw any distinction between National Insurance, and employee National Insurance.

It’s a cack-handed attempt to cover up the election lie. An admission that Reeves has been caught red-handed (and not for the first time, remember her CV?).

And Labour expects people not to pick up on this? Its manifesto is still freely available on the internet for all to read (if they can stomach it).

Labour lied to win power, and now it’s lying about what it lied about.

What did we expect? Reeves has launched a tax war on working people. And as the saying goes, the first casualty of war is truth.