MPs should not be distracted by the politics of envy. But we can do much more to combat widening inequality in this country, to deliver fairness and tax justice.

I’ve tabled a Commons motion this week which I hope the Chancellor will take note of as she prepares for the Autumn Budget on November 26.

I agreed with the Prime Minister when he said: “Those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden”. For decades, the richest have got richer while the poor continued to struggle. We’re a very unequal country. The top 50 richest families now hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population, and there has been a nearly 1,000 per cent increase in the wealth of UK billionaires since 1990.

It'd be disappointing if a Labour chancellor didn’t adopt reasonable measures to promote equality and lift the poorest out of poverty.

I know right-wing lobbyists, media, MPs and commentators all peddle the lie that to raise moderately higher taxes on those who can easily pay it would mean we’d raise less tax as many would move their wealth or themselves elsewhere. But that isn’t borne out by the evidence.

We’re fighting to stop the Penzance Lloyds Bank Closure. Please support our petition.

Lloyds was happy enough to accept £37-billion of public funds when it needed to be bailed out to avoid collapse 17 years ago. But it turns its back on the public when bosses view us as an inconvenience.

The planned closure of Lloyds will have a severe impact on older and disabled people, local businesses and on the digitally excluded. The Bank, operating from the iconic Market House, Penzance for 100 years, is planned to close in January.

There’s a petition, and I called a public meeting at St John’s Hall, Penzance on Monday 10th November; immediately after I meet Lloyds Bank regional managers at the Bank. I’d invited Bank officials to meet local businesses

and the wider community concerned about the closure, but they declined. I’ll report the outcome of this afterwards.

Lloyds Group posted a £6-billion profit before tax last year.

An MP of a far-right party opined last week, “it drives me mad when you see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”. She was promptly criticised by leading Labour figures, who were themselves silent when the Prime Minister told us the that high levels of migration risk the UK becoming an “Island of strangers”.

That politicians are tempted to deliberately use language they know tiptoes along the very edge of the swamp of bigotry and racism should concern us all.

Meanwhile many people I know say: “it drives me mad when you see TV programmes full of far-right politicians, and their supporters.”