Starmer and Reeves are about to learn a hard lesson in simple economics

His remarks bring back memories of Geoffrey Howe in the early 1980s, when he similarly broke with the tradition of pre-Budget purdah to warn of unremitting harshness.

Yet there is a crucial difference. Under Thatcher, you could be sure of broadly pro-free market intentions, and of measures that would ultimately be of some help to enterprise and wealth creation. 

There is no such surety with Starmer and Reeves. They talk a good game, but show few signs of understanding the incentives needed to establish a vibrant enterprise-, wealth-creating economy.

Having ruled out increases in the three major sources of taxation, they also show scant regard for the adverse behavioural consequences that almost any attempt to increase revenues by fiddling around in the foothills of the tax system are bound to trigger.

Instead they assume static costing, where any adjustment to tax brings a proportionate increase in revenues. In the real world, this scarcely ever happens. 

Individuals and companies change the way they do things to minimise the impact.

These second round, indirect effects tend substantially to reduce the intended revenue-raising purpose of the measures, and are moreover often negative for growth.

Imagine being a fly on the wall of the meetings now taking place between the Chancellor and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

“But if you do that, Chancellor,” the OBR’s chairman Richard Hughes must find himself repeatedly saying, “you might raise a bit more money in the short run, but over the longer term you’ll find it costs you, and therefore brings you no nearer to meeting your fiscal rules”.

A case in point is the decision to raise the rate of taxation on North Sea profits to 78pc and cancel most allowances. This will increase the amount raised this year and next, but by undermining future investment, poleaxe it further out, leaving the Government’s shiny new clean energy investment vehicle GB Energy devoid of its £8.3bn budget.

Growth-enhancing it is not.

Instead, Downing Street focuses its plan for growth on top-down government interference and enhanced workers’ rights, as if reducing the working week to four days and curtailing the ability to hire and fire as needed might have the reverse effect to the one you would expect and provide a major boost to productivity.

In any case, Starmer’s warnings of pain for “those with the broadest shoulders” has given rise to a veritable torrent of speculation as to what he might have in mind.