As the old joke goes, you wouldn’t want to start from here. On Friday, data for the second quarter showed that the UK’s budget deficit blew out to £24.4bn, a third wider than the same period last year. Government expenditure was up 7 per cent, while receipts rose just 2 per cent.

Alarmingly, as the economy has slowed, growth in income and corporation tax revenues has stalled and value-added receipts are shrinking fast. Spending beyond its means, like so many Britons, the government has pushed up net debt as a percentage of gross domestic product to 38 per cent, the highest level for almost a decade.