The Treasury has announced a new consultation on taxation policy aimed at syphoning the pockets of the wealthy.

A spokesman told us, “We’re not making a big song and dance of this just yet because the papers would be mean about Rachel again, bringing up her dodgy CV and expenses, when there’s really no need to. Everyone already knows that was all true.”

Pressed by Chatty on current thinking, the spokesman told us, “Well, tax the rich, yes, but there’d be key exemptions. Obviously, we wouldn’t tax politicians, friends and neighbours of politicians, political party donors, or people who say they’d take their money abroad. And, of course, we wouldn’t look to tax anyone we think would come to Westminster to protest.”

With an annual shortfall of billions to find and hands tied politically by the government’s stubborn refusal to talk about rejoining the EU, the Chancellor and her team can only look at limited new taxation options. “They promised not to do the obvious thing and raise income tax, national insurance or VAT, so we have to find groups of people nobody cares about and hit them hard. We thought rich people might be a good start.”

“We’re confident that with a cast iron exemption for them, MPs will vote this through. We can’t expect even MPs to be so dim, they’d vote through tax increases for themselves, so since we need them to be onboard, we’ve exempted them.”

Giles Giles, a spokesman for the Rich Bastards Alliance, an organisation whose Latin motto, “Dives divitias augeat”, which translates to “Let the rich get richer,” told us, “This sounds like a rum do. We’ll be having our offshore conference shortly, and I predict our members won’t stand for this new discriminatory tax, which is based solely on how much a chap is worth. And what is rich, anyway? Not all of our members are properly rich. Some of them are scarcely worth £10 million. They can’t afford the hare-brained schemes of here today, gone tomorrow politicians to upset the family apple-cart, can they?”

Meanwhile, the government continues to believe it’s in charge.