The energy bills and credit card bills have arrived. Unpleasant reading. The cost-of-living crisis is totally real.

Unlike former Conservative Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi, I’ve not had a stonking tax fine. But, then again, I’m sure we can all say we’ve never owed tax on £27 million and failed to cough up.

Thanks to the Tories, families in Watford like yours and mine scramble to find the cash to pay energy bills, increased mortgage payments and for the weekly shop.

When sitting down with my wife to work out the bills, we were shocked. Our gas and electricity have gone up by 30 per cent over a year and a whopping 69 per cent since September 2021.

Zahawi however previously thought nothing of charging the taxpayer for heating his stables. It is truly a different world.

We’ve become a country where the multi-millionaire Prime Minister’s wife maintained ‘non-dom’ status to avoid paying tax on her UK income for years, and he appoints Zahawi to the Cabinet – a man, who when Chancellor of the Exchequer, was fined by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs!

Rishi Sunak claimed that Zahawi had “already addressed this matter in full.” That was clearly not so and never had been.

Zahawi was a founder of an opinion polling company. Sunak’s weak defence for his supposed ignorance is to shift the blame; ‘It’s not me, guv, but you guv!’ Spot the joke.

The Conservatives are simply laughing at us all. They take no responsibility, and despite being cash rich, try to avoid their dues and dish out jobs for the boys by means of dodgy multi-million-pound contracts for unusable PPE while starving our NHS of cash. It is tragic.

  • Cllr Matt Turmaine is Labour’s Parliamentary candidate for Watford