We now know the full cost of the Conservatives’ decision to foist Liz Truss on to the country.

Last week’s Autumn Statement laid out a stark picture of a year-long recession, falling wages, rising taxes and worsening public services.

It was the Conservatives who crashed the economy but the rest of us are going to have to pay the price.

Freezing personal allowances will cost the average earner more than £600 a year. Energy bills will go up by another £500 to £3,000 in April. Council tax bills are set to rise further. Pensioners face losing their homes to pay for care bills.

No other advanced economy is cutting spending or increasing taxes on working people as they head into a recession.

The Office of Budget Responsibility says that, following the Autumn Statement, living standards will fall by 7% over the next two years. This is the biggest fall since records began.

It means real wages will be lower by the time of the next General Election than when the Conservatives came to power in 2010. An astonishing and unprecedented wasted decade of economic mismanagement.

And it is over the whole of the last twelve years that that the Conservatives should be judged.

Because, while Liz Truss’s disastrous “Mini-Budget” was responsible for £30billion of the black hole in the country’s finances, the other £20bn was created by Rishi Sunak when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

We are the only G7 economy that is smaller now than before Covid. The US has grown 4.2%, Europe 2.1%. Britain has shrunk 0.7%.

£9billion pounds was wasted on shoddy PPE bought from Conservative cronies. Billions more were handed over to fraudsters and criminal gangs in dodgy Covid loans.

The NHS is on its knees with over 7 million people waiting for an operation, but the waiting lists were already at an historically high 4 million before Covid struck. Every other public service you care to mention – schools, police, social care, courts, councils, the asylum system – are in a similar parlous state.

Britain has been left uniquely exposed to the inflationary shock of Putin’s war in Ukraine because the Conservatives shut down our gas storage, stalled on new nuclear power stations, banned renewable technologies like onshore wind and failed to insulate Britain’s draughty homes.

The Conservatives haven’t just failed to fix the roof while the sun was shining. They have spent the last twelve years knocking holes in the roof with a sledgehammer.

Even in the choices they have taken to fix the mess they created the Conservatives are showing that they are not on the side of working people.

The Conservatives have once more protected the wealthy by failing to clamp down on the “non-dom” tax dodge used by millionaires, including Rishi Sunak’s wife. Ending this loophole would bring in an estimated £3billion without hitting a single ordinary working person.

The Government is winding down the Taxpayer Protection Taskforce that was supposed to recover the billions wasted in fraud during Covid, effectively giving up on ever getting it back and letting the criminals off scott free.

This isn’t good enough. The Conservatives have allowed taxpayers to be ripped off. We want our money back.

Gaping loopholes have been left in the windfall tax on energy companies. Shell paid nothing in tax in the UK this year despite record global profits due to tax breaks introduced by Rishi Sunak when he was Chancellor. Closing these loopholes would bring in billions more without harming the energy companies or hitting their investment.

Needless to say, virtually the only measure of Liz Truss’s that the Conservatives have kept is to lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses.

We’re never going to get out of this hole without growing the economy, but the Government appears to have thrown in the towel on growth. After looking at the Government’s plans, The Office for Budget Responsibility has downgraded their growth forecast.

We need a serious long-term plan to get our economy growing again powered by the talent and effort of the working people and businesses of this country.

This is what Labour is offering. A modern industrial strategy where government works hand in hand with business to create a fairer, greener, and more dynamic economy, with new jobs across every part of the country in homegrown renewables, green hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage.

Britain can no longer afford a Conservative government.

They’ve crashed the economy and have no idea how to get it going again.

They are making working people pay for the mess they created while protecting their rich mates.

They are taking a wrecking ball to the public services that ordinary people rely on.

It could be so much better than this. It’s time for a change.