Readers will understand the print deadline for the Recorder means these words may already be out of date. In a functioning democracy this would not be the case. Frankly, that’s not where we are, nor have we been for a considerable time.

The Prime Minister has fallen. The Government is in disarray. The rest of us are paying the price.

The September budget was a shambolic disaster. Much of it has now been reversed, but clearly the damage has already been done. We can see this through rising prices, rents and mortgages.

The Government promised a budget on Halloween, just days away. That budget was to inform the country of where we are and set a path towards recovery.

I cannot believe they will do either within their own timescale. Meanwhile, we must endure the farce of yet another Conservative leader election.

The current Chancellor now says that, on top of all the pain of rising prices, rents and mortgages, they’re going to inflict even deeper spending cuts. The energy price guarantee will only last six months, with no certainty for families after April.

Newham’s communities are paying the price of the Conservative Party’s arrogant incompetence. Food bank use is much more widespread than ever before. Our food banks now need to support families on an industrial scale. During the week, many of our children only eat at school.

The generous souls from charities and faith groups who voluntarily staff food banks, routinely see families from once relatively prosperous areas coming in for help to get by, so rife is ‘In-Work’ poverty.

What makes it so infuriating is there’s been nothing from the Government to make life any easier for the cash-strapped who find they have to return items to the shelves, when they reach the supermarket checkout.

There’s nothing for low paid workers who can’t afford their rent, nor pensioners worried sick by sky-high fuel bills, nor single parents struggling to pay for their kids’ school uniforms.

We desperately need a General Election to end this continual chaos and get the utterly dysfunctional Conservative Party out of government.