It’s easy to get inured to big numbers as the parties make claims and counter-claims about billions and trillions of pounds actually or supposedly being promised in tax and spending increases. So let’s get one thing clear about Labour’s pledges. They are very, very big indeed.

Labour is looking to increase public spending by more than £130 billion a year. That’s on a base of about £810 billion. This would increase public spending by about six percentage points of national income. It would take the share spent by government to levels not sustained in peacetime.

These numbers ignore the costs of nationalising water, energy, rail, mail and BT Openreach. They also ignore the long-term consequences of a particularly imprudent pledge: that state pension ages