Hi, Ignatius Mouse, founder of Mature Vermin Asset Management, MVAM for short. I was all set to write a sensible, predictable follow-up to the Chancellor’s pre-Budget speech. The sort of thing everyone else does, presumably to reassure clients they haven’t fallen asleep on their calculators, when something far more interesting happened. I was perched behind the skirting board, enjoying a wedge of Portuguese Sheep’s Cheese, when I overheard the humans upstairs. The younger ones were airing their grievances. House prices! Cost of living! Taxes draining them dry! A tragic chorus, delivered whilst sipping matcha chai lattes, and wearing athleisure that cost more than my entire nest.

I twitched an ear. Not because their woes are trivial. Mice face similar issues, particularly with squirrels stockpiling abandoned birdhouses and never living in them. But still, something didn’t quite add up. Then it occurred to me, perhaps it is not that the young are paying too much tax. It is that they are paying too little. They have stopped paying the taxes that used to matter. Or, as the Chancellor might have said in her recent speech, we have no money because the cheese has moved without us realising it.

Back in the mid-1990s, when petrol was guilt-free, ashtrays came standard in cars, and having a drink after work was considered vital networking, the government’s tax revenues were fuelled (quite literally) by smoking, drinking and driving. A golden era for the Exchequer: 75% of a litre of petrol was tax. Now it is closer to 55%. Cigarette tax filled the coffers, helped by the fact that around 26% of adults smoked. And beer duties were so plentiful the government could practically balance the books on pints alone. UK alcohol consumption per head peaked in 2004. In those days, one could drive to the pub, smoke a pack, and sink a few pints and through tax alone fund a small hospital, or at least resurface a B-road. Taxes on these three things alone brought in about 11% of all government revenue. Today they provide only 4%. On today’s numbers, that’s a £77bn black hole that needs filling. The reason? The young are too healthy. Admirable, but fiscally disastrous.

At MVAM, we like to think we come up with solutions to problems. Although occasionally it feels like it’s the other way around! But here, maybe we have something. If Gen Z insist on living long, healthy lives, free from historically reliable vices, then extra taxes on gyms, protein powders and food delivery services may be the only way forward. A few percentage points on nourish bowls and mindfulness retreats could work wonders for the national deficit. Because if vice no longer funds the country, virtue will have to.

We mice are used to our cheese stores moving or disappearing overnight. The lesson? Work out where your new cheese is going to come from and start taxing that before the old cheese disappears. Until that is recognised, no UK administration will produce a consistent tax regime that withstands a changing world. No small task, and one that requires real vision. Something that frequently escapes our leaders, whatever colour rosette they wear, who seem intent on using the past as their guiding light.

As for the young, they’re fine. They aren’t the problem; they’re the point. It’s when the old mice stop guarding their final crumbs and start helping the next generation that the colony prospers. Let’s hope Rachel has the whiskers to see it.