Who’d have thought it, says Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail: “after years spent searching for the legendary magic money tree”, the Conservatives have finally found it. “And lo! It turns out to be the British taxpayer.” As the nation’s workers “wearily roll up their sleeves” to offer up “yet another vein for HMRC to bleed dry”, the public sector waits for its latest cash transfusion. As ever, it’s the “squeezed middle” who will be bearing the heaviest burden, which is no bad thing in itself – “many of us are willing to chip in more in times of need”. But the Tories are digging themselves into a “tax-and-spend hole” they show no sign of even wanting to get out of. What happened to their “bold, reforming agenda” of 2019, to growing the economy and rewarding an industrious workforce? If you want people to “bust a gut to get the economy going”, you have to give them something in return, not “claw back” any gains and chuck them into a giant public sector black hole. That’s what Labour are for. But these days, what’s the difference?

After “all the rants and insults, the political freeze and the trade bans”, Xi Jinping has “brought his intimidation campaign of Australia to a politely meek end”, says Peter Hartcher in The Sydney Morning Herald. On Tuesday, the Chinese leader met Australian PM Anthony Albanese on the sidelines of the G20 conference in Indonesia – and it couldn’t have gone better. Australia was once likened to “chewing gum stuck to the bottom of China’s shoe” by a Beijing propagandist, but this week Xi was enthusing warmly about how he’d visited every state in the country.