GOVERNMENTS are just like households, according to the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves. But what sort of household prioritises the people who earn the most, while those who need support are left to suffer?

Not the kind of household I’d like to live in, anyway. But after barely four weeks in office, this is the dysfunctional and grossly unequal family the Labour government seems to want to emulate.

Announcing a raft of spending cuts this week, Reeves said: “When household budgets are stretched, families have to make difficult choices. And government needs to do the same.”

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A cute message, and one I’m sure is supposed to inspire us all to rally together with that fabled British Blitz spirit.

However, I think by now we’ve been through one too many crises to be particularly spirited about anything, except for maybe the realisation that “all in this together” was always just another cheap slogan.

Somehow the “difficult choices” are always ones which land at the doors of those with lower incomes and fewer choices of their own, and it’s getting pretty old.

The Labour government is resolute in its message that this is not austerity.

It’s a necessity, they say, because of £22 billion overspend left by the Conservatives.

This is why it simply must take the difficult decision to scrap plans (set in motion under the Tories, but delayed) to cap social care bills for disabled and older people in England at £86,000 across their lifetimes. This despite the fact that disabled people are amongst those at the highest risk of living in poverty, including deep poverty and destitution.

It’s why Labour absolutely has to stop Winter Fuel Payments for pensioners who aren’t receiving means-tested benefits like pension credit.

Never mind that this will leave those just above the threshold struggling to get by, while one in three of those entitled to receive pension credit aren’t claiming it – often because they’re not aware that they can.

No doubt it will also be why, come October 30 when the new government’s first Budget is announced, there will be no change to the cruel policies of their predecessors which plunged children into poverty like the two-child limit in Universal Credit and child tax credits, and the benefit cap.

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All of this, and – as already promised by the Secretary to the Treasury – more “difficult decisions” to come, which sounds an awful like more cuts down the line.

But don’t worry, it’s not austerity, because it’s the good guys doing it.

Strangely, despite the financial mess Labour has walked into – and which, whatever they might now say, they knew very well was coming – the party has promised not to raise income tax, VAT or National Insurance.

Given the circumstances, you’d think an obvious solution would be to raise more revenue for public services by taxing the income of the richest few at a substantially higher rate. Or, by introducing a wealth tax. Or, by introducing a tax on share buybacks for the biggest corporations.

Or maybe by focusing on helping people in the here and now instead of committing to spend yet more money on an enormously expensive nuclear weapons system which the government – thankfully – has no intention of using.

As it stands, the rich are only getting richer, while the rest of us are being condescendingly assured that we will “understand” the tough decisions the government has to make and that we will surely grin and bear the brunt, like the jolly good sports we always are. They must really think we’re stupid.

I suppose when Reeves says that government is like a household, she really means that government is like the parents and we’re all the children who will eat our greens and go to bed when we’re told and not worry our pretty little heads about where the money comes from or where it goes.

In reality, this Great British family of Labour’s is nothing like most households. In most homes, whatever money there is will be scraped together to make sure the most vulnerable members are provided for – the children, the elderly, the unwell.

Most households don’t dip into their food budget to line their garden with bombs, or to line the pockets of bankers or the highest bidder because money and power are the only concepts they can understand.

Often, in the worst corners of the media and political discourse, a refusal to invest in social security is justified with caricatures of poor people spending money frivolously, instead of budgeting for what matters most.

The evidence shows this isn’t true, yet year after year the UK Government has been doing just that and getting away with it.

Most homes, most people, care for their family members first, not because they think they’re being altruistic, but because that’s just what you do.

That’s a principle that the Labour Party itself was once associated with. This party was the architect of the NHS and a social security system underpinned by the knowledge that we cannot predict when we will be the ones who need its support, and by the belief that every one of us should have that support when we do need it.

These are values which are still shared by many of us, and which will surely have motivated many of those who voted for Labour, even with the smallest hope that it might bring us closer to that vision than the years of suffering inflicted by the Tories.

This Labour government has already sent a message about what it thinks of its MPs who were so attached to those values that they voted with an SNP amendment to the King’s Speech which would have committed to scrapping the two-child limit.

Like any truly destructive family, the Labour leadership had its seven dissenters packing their bags before they even had time to warm up their seats.

It beggars belief, but at least we have a real measure of who they are now.

When the budget comes around, I only hope that more in Labour will have reflected on their principles and will take a stand when it counts.