Instead, as it flails around in its desperation to change the subject from Partygate (good luck) and throw “red meat” to the electorate, the Government’s attempts to combat the cost of living crisis have become increasingly muddled.

It has, for example, so far resisted cutting VAT on energy bills because it would be a “blunt instrument” and would benefit everyone, not just the poor.

And yet the culture secretary Nadine Dorries has just frozen the BBC licence fee for two years because she could “not justify extra pressure on the wallets of hardworking households”.

Without getting into the pros or cons of either policy, how is that instrument any less blunt? Or is the Government suggesting the rich don’t watch television?

Soon ministers will be faced with an even bigger circle to square. Wage growth has been pretty dreadful in the UK for nearly a decade and a half now. From 2007 until 2017, pay fell in real terms, meaning the UK’s performance was worse than in Mexico or Greece.

This was widely considered to be one of the driving forces behind Brits seeking some form of radical change – be it Brexit or flirting with the possibility of voting for Jeremy Corbyn.

There were signs the UK was beginning to turn a corner just before the pandemic hit. A robust labour market with unemployment falling below 4pc meant that workers had the whip hand and were finally able to start negotiating higher salaries.

Somewhat weirdly, it looks like we are in almost exactly the same situation as we, fingers crossed, reach the beginning of the end of the pandemic. The UK unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage points in the final quarter of the year to 4.1pc.

The number of job vacancies in the final three months of the year rose to a new record of 1,247,000, an increase of 462,000 from the first quarter of 2020, before the pandemic hit.