AND so it begins.

The 2029 General Election opening shots were fired this week as Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the new Government had suddenly discovered a £22 billion spending black hole.

This, of course, means promises made to the nation and to the people of Wellington by the old Government can now be scrapped.

Among those scrapped promises is the Restoring Your Railways fund, set up to reverse some of the 1964 cuts to the nation’s railways.

One of those 1964 cuts was, of course, Wellington Railway Station, which saw its last train steam away in October that year.

After giving her statement to Parliament, the Chancellor immediately had to backtrack on some of her cuts when challenged by Wellington’s new MP Gideon Amos.

Ms Reeves told Mr Amos ‘of course’ station projects such as Wellington which had ‘already started’ would still go ahead.

It seems Chancellor’s definition of ‘already started’ means a station where no funding has yet been committed, no spades have yet been sunk in the ground, no access road has yet been approved, and we are only at stage four of an eight-stage GRIP approval process.

Which begs the worrying question, what does a promise from a Chancellor actually mean?