Earlier this week, the Labour Government in Westminster outlined what I can only describe as thinly vailed justification for their lack of ambition and looming tax rises.

I want to be clear, this £20 billion black hole is a series of fudged numbers aimed at discrediting the achievements of the previous government and laying a foundation for low ambition.

When Labour left office in 2010, the country’s finances were in dire straits, yet now they have inherited the fastest growing economy in the G7 thanks to decisions taken by the previous administration.

Just because Labour claim that they have inherited the worst set of economic circumstances since World War 2, that does not make it true.

I will not pretend that the Conservatives did not make mistakes and nor will I claim that the handling of the Government’s finances were perfect, but this claim that the treasury is in a worse state than Labour thought is just wrong.

Over the election Labour said that they had “fully costed, fully funded plans”. Clearly this isn’t the case.

You don’t need to be a world leading economist to see that the country has been through a number of historic events over the last five years.

Hundreds of billions of pounds were spent on providing financial support for hard working families across the United Kingdom as the country went into lockdown to protect lives and livelihoods.

We then had to deal with global inflation rising as a result of the pandemic and Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

This was not a phenomenon unique to the United Kingdom and of course, this was always going to come with a cost.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time Labour have failed to read the room when it comes to the country’s finances.

Last year, the Labour Government in Cardiff Bay were forced to pass a series of knee jerk financial responses to fix the underfunding of our healthcare service after blaming financial pressures that only Labour Ministers failed to see.

Only time will tell what other surprises the country will be in for under Labour, and I fear that it will swiftly come to more tax rises on hard working people.