If words lose their meaning, how can voters believe them?

In the white noise of speculation, briefing and leaks about the Budget, one story stood out in the past week. Rachel Reeves has asked Treasury officials working on possible tax rises to protect the incomes of the lower two-thirds of earners, according to Sam Coates of Sky News.

- JOHN RENTOUL

This would mean, in effect, defining “working people” as those who earn less than about £46,000 a year. Only they would be covered by Labour’s manifesto promise not to increase taxes. The better-off one-third of the working population would be defined as nonworking people for the purposes of that pledge.

In the make-believe world of Labour’s promises, experienced nurses, police sergeants and deputy heads of primary schools lie around all day eating peeled grapes.

This is the trouble that politicians get into if they try to make words mean what they say they mean. The term “working people” was slippery from the start. It was meant to send a signal to the working class that Labour would stand up for them, without offending the party’s middle-class support. But it was not so much a dog whistle as a battle trumpet of the class war — and thus sounded the wrong note for a party whose voters were, at the last election, just as middle class as those of the Conservatives.

It offended pedants because it excluded retired people and those on out-of-work benefits. And it was meaningless because the actual number of people of working age who do lie around all day eating peeled grapes is quite small.