Dear politicians, I know the country has no money left. But you can still be generous

From Lee Anderson’s uncharitable comments about the Mayor of London to the Rwanda policy, economic lack can result in a meanness of spirit, says George Pitcher. But Christ offers a different way

Liam Byrne, the outgoing Labour chief secretary to Gordon Brown’s failed government, notoriously left a note for his successor at his desk in 2010 saying simply: “I’m afraid there is no money left.”

It was meant to be a joke. But naturally it was flourished by the incoming leader of the Conservative-LibDem coalition, David Cameron, as the crass and callous attitude of a Labour government to the public spending of what was, after all, taxpayers’ money.

At the forthcoming general election, which will most probably happen between Easter and Advent, there will be even less than no money left. The UK struggles in the wake of a cost-of-living crisis with the highest tax burden since the second world war.