Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s strategy guru and now his Chief of Staff, had studied closely the period immediately after the 2010 election, when George Osborne and David Cameron took an axe to public spending, decimated services and made millions of people poorer, and yet were rewarded by voters at the next election. The key to their success? Convincing the public that the pain was necessary to heal the ills left behind by the last Labour government.
As I wrote in this column back in July, the success of Starmer’s first term would depend in no small part on whether he and his team were able to convince the public of this. If it worked, the plan would mean that many of the tough decisions to come, along with any failures or perceived lack of progress under Labour, could be pinned on the Tories.
And so, when the difficult decisions inevitably came, it was Reeves rather than her predecessors who had to shoulder the blame. While any Chancellor would have had a difficult task given the state of the country, Reeves announced a series of particularly unpopular moves.
Since then, things have got much worse. The nascent buds of economic recovery have been frozen. Growth has stalled. Some experts believe the UK has already slipped into recession. The cost of borrowing has soared, leaving the government with almost no money to spend. The Bank of England is no longer expected to slash interest rates this year. Inflation is likely to remain higher than it was forecast to.
Now, seven months into her time in office, Reeves is reportedly planning a speech this month on her plan for delivering growth. She is said to be frantically asking colleagues, business leaders and government regulators alike to come up with proposals to jump-start the economy. Labour MPs are among those asking why on earth this work was not done when the party was in opposition. Why is it only now that the Chancellor is drawing up a plan to deliver what Labour insists is its top priority?
Keir Starmer is doing Rachel Reeves no favours
Read MoreAsked what they are doing to stimulate growth, government officials point to a series of piecemeal announcements on housing, energy and health, but these will take years to be felt. Time is one thing that Reeves no longer has on her side.
Politically, the position in which Reeves finds herself is potentially recoverable. The first year was always likely to be the most difficult for Labour. The benefits of what it is doing now will take many months to start to be felt. The next election is years away; the government may have plummeted in popularity (largely as a result of Reeves’s decisions), but there is time to turn that around. In time, voters may start to come back.
It was in this context that Reeves jetted off to China last week, defying her critics and insisting that Britain must do more business with the world’s second-biggest economy.
The Chancellor must hope that her plan for growth – when it finally comes – is more successful than her trip to China, and indeed her time in office so far. If it isn’t, it won’t just be Reeves who could find herself out of a job.
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