Perhaps it is naive of a lifelong businessman, such as me, to expect politicians to put the nation first rather than pursuing vested interests, especially as most politicians in my lifetime seem to have fallen foul of this to a greater or lesser extent.

As I remember, only Mrs Thatcher appeared to do her best for the nation without fear or favour, perhaps slipping up when it came to her son, and set the UK on a course for growth and prosperity while freeing up the people of Britain from the controlling, dead-hand tyranny of the state and the vested interests of trade unions.

While all governments seem to have their favourites and sacrifice wealth and prosperity to promote narrow, sectoral interests, the current Government seem to be making it an art form. In fact almost all that they have so far announced has been with the objective of delivering to the interests of particular groups.

Some might argue that politics is merely a battle between interests with natural trade-offs, but I truly believe that the nation is crying out for a government that will promote and nurture Britain for the good of all, to the extent they can.

Messrs Starmer and Reeves repeatedly promised before the election to focus upon wealth cre ation and economic growth on which they said, correctly, that everything else depends – and yet they appear to have done the opposite.

Either they don’t understand what they are doing or they have cynically focussed on specific interest groups and knowingly promised untruths. They are either fools or knaves, as Shakespeare would have said.

Labour’s Net Zero policy, as articulated by the clueless Mr Milliband, certainly plays to the virtue-signalling, Islington left and the Green Energy backers of Labour, who are themselves living high on the hog, at the expense of the taxpayer subsidies and excessive energy and consumer costs. It may also be perceived as a way of preventing leakage of votes to the Green Party and thus in the interests of Labour.

Of course, the Crown Estate also makes a pretty penny out of wind farms, but what this pursuit of Net Zero certainly is not, is the the pursuit of the national interest. On the contrary, it makes the UK less competitive, fails to reduce global CO2 emissions and exports industry, jobs and pollution to other countries, not to mention stimulating the dangerous mining of required minerals and the challenges of disposing of toxic batteries and end-of-life wind turbines.

Similarly, the seeming abandonment of nuclear, a cheaper and cleaner energy source, plus the absence of fracking for gas is a recipe for excessive cost on UK taxpayers and consumers, except for the green sector.

The most obvious example of pandering to vested interests has been the immediate rewarding of certain trade unions that fund Labour, with enormous wage increases for their members: junior doctors, GPs, train drivers, all for nothing, for no increase in productivity.

At the same time this Government have promised £11billion to help countries overseas pursue Net Zero – more virtue-signalling- but have chosen to remove around £2billion of “unaffordable” winter fuel support from British pensioners. All this adds up to a flagrant example of favouring vested interests over the change that Britain desperately needs to generate wealth creation and growth. In fact, it is anti-growth.

And what are we likely to see from Labour’s much vaunted review of the NHS, an organisation which is in danger of running the country if not ruining the country, a mega-example of the tail wagging the dog.

More spending? More national resource poured into the black hole of a dysfunctional, inefficient and downright dangerous institution? An organisation that is the epitome of vested interests, seemingly run more for the benefit of the people who work in it than for the consumers who want its services and who fund it.

Then there’s the conundrum of Angela Rayner‘s house-building programme. A classic example of infrastructure that is being overwhelmed by an ever-growing number of incomers and growing population who require homes. Here the vested interest appears to be new, likely Labour voters, with politics in Britain being drawn along sectarian lines for the first time in centuries.

House building is good for growth but needs to be planned, in particular the trades necessary to deliver it need to be developed through training and apprenticeships, at the expense of the vested interests of the Labour leaning Universities sector. Angela Rayner is up against it and likely to fail.

Chancellor Reeves’ answer to all of this appears to be to head for a policy of “soak the rich”, the “rich“ being the very group that pay most of the income tax in the UK.

Of course, the real rich will simply domicile abroad as will “non-Doms“ putting an even greater tax burden on the middling earners, who may themselves remove from the counter if the pips squeak. Italy and Portugal, Canada and Singapore beckon. Therein lies the doom loop of socialism, more and more stolen from fewer and fewer to satiate vested interests with no tangible growth in productivity, innovation or wealth-creation.

This may likely only be a one-term administration, but five years is a long time. PM Starmer has not only imposed swift penalties and long sentences on rioters, but it seems on the nation as a whole, benefitting only vested interests.

John Longworth is an entrepreneur and businessman, Chairman of the Independent Business Network of family businesses and formerly an MEP.