It was a vintage year for fake news. In 2018 we were told that austerity was coming to an end, and those who had made all of the sacrifices would now reap its rewards — It wasn’t, and they won’t.

The economic skew ensured that the rich got even richer while the number of people living below the official poverty line passed 14 million. A report by Philip Alston, the United Nations rapporteur on extreme poverty, described the government’s approach as ‘punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous’ and the rising levels of child poverty as ‘not just a disgrace but a national calamity and a national economic disaster’.