I worked in Starmer's No 10 - his biggest blind spot is Rachel Reeves |
When the history of Keir Starmer’s premiership is written, the name of Rachel Reeves will be stamped through like a stick of Blackpool rock.
From cutting pensioners’ winter fuel allowance to the welfare rout, so many of the Prime Minister’s most difficult moments have originated in the Treasury.
Now, with John Healey’s principled resignation over defence spending, they threaten to bookend his time in office.
To be fair to Reeves, she was dealt one of the worst hands of any Chancellor. Public finances ravaged by Covid, the after-shock of the Liz Truss mini-budget and public services on their knees.
But it is possible to play a bad hand poorly.
Curbs to winter fuel payments may have been sensible, but the Treasury did nothing to prepare the public for a policy that is still thrown back in Labour MPs’ faces on the doorstep almost two years on.
The long wait for the Budget did little to lift the animal spirits of the economy either. When it came, Reeves rolled the dice, hiking taxes but leaving little “head room” for rainy days.
As the Spring Statement........