Sometimes, I get told by opponents to stop talking about national politics. This puzzles me, because national politics has massive implications for the people I represent and the local services those people rely on.

People are being driven to food banks or into debt as they struggle against rising energy prices, and now rising rent and mortgage bills too.

So yes, most of my focus is on working locally to help our people and communities. But given current circumstances, I would be letting down those people if I didn’t talk about national issues too.

The irony of the past few weeks of economic and political chaos is that the UK government still hasn’t got round to the most difficult parts of any budget – where to make the savings to pay for their spending commitments.

Staggeringly, Truss and Kwarteng’s ill-fated financial statement was meant to be the easy bit – the giveaways.

But they chose the wrong group of people to benefit. They chose to cut taxes for the rich, and tanked the economy by opening up a huge gap in their sums without explaining how they’d make it all add up.

I fear that worse is to come as the government attempt to bail themselves out of their own mess. Public services just can’t cope with another two years of huge cuts, after a decade of austerity.

The government says it wants growth.

But you can’t have sustainable growth without properly functioning public services and without the people who work within them.

You can’t have long-term growth without schools to give future generations the skills they need to contribute.

You can’t have growth without a properly funded health and care system to help people remain healthy and productive, and to treat them when they get ill.

You can’t have growth if your workforce is suffering through a lack of decent, affordable housing.

Public services, and those who work in them, aren’t the enemies of economic growth. They’re essential for growth.

Neither will growth be achieved in the long-term if we ignore or deny the realities of the climate crisis.

Instead of drinking from the drip-tray of fossil fuels by pursuing fracking, we need to invest in renewable energy and green technologies, so that our companies and our nations can lead the way in helping the world deliver decarbonisation.

Our people are set to pay the price for the economic incompetence of the Conservative government. Our services, like schools, social care and the NHS, are set to pay the price too. That’s why I will never apologise for talking about national politics.

The Tories have run out of ideas. The longer they hang around in Downing Street, the more damage they’ll do. We need a general election now.