‘Mr Speaker, this government has the right economic plan for this country.’ It’s never a good sign for a sombre economic statement when your opening line gets a hearty laugh.
Rachel Reeves stood up to give a Spring Statement on the economy which might just as well have been a hostage video. The Chancellor’s delivery is redolent of the stop-start of traffic near a recent road accident. If you play certain Black Sabbath records backwards you get a more convincing and comforting delivery than Rachel Reeves talking about the economy.
Reeves kept on talking about how the world was ‘increasingly dangerous’ and ‘uncertain’. Once again, there was a dark comedy to the fact that the Chancellor believes she is part of the solution to such a situation as opposed to one of the minor and more irritating causes of it. Of course we got the normal blaming of everything on the Tories, specifically Liz Truss. Presumably the short-lived Prime Minister is going to become a sort of semi-legendary figure in Labour circles, with whatever cave-dwelling group of homunculi that make up the Labour party in 2,000 years having to rehearse articles of faith about her culpability for all that has ever been wrong with the world.
Of course, Reeves’s actual statement was froth weight. There is more substance in a bowl of angel delight than there is in the Chancellor’s details. Her predictions of sunlit uplands if she is allowed to stay in charge depended on ‘new forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility’, which apparently showed that ‘our plan is the right one’. Given the OBR’s usual forecasting accuracy, and the fact that the world is in a sort of permanent geopolitical flux at the moment, the idea that these forecasts will remain worth the Excel spreadsheet on which they are written is for the birds. Reeves might as well have stood there and consulted burnt entrails.
‘This government has restored economic stability.’ We have long known that Reeves comes from the ‘say it enough times to make it true’ school of public policy, but there was a sort of brazen-faced bolshiness to her delivery today which shocked even those of us who are, regrettably, seasoned Rachel Watchers. Misplaced confidence in her own abilities has become the Chancellor’s calling card, but even by her standards this statement seemed insanely triumphalist when considering the global situation.
Hilariously, Reeves slipped with her words and instead announced – more honestly it turned out – ‘the promise which we changed’ as opposed to ‘the change which we promised.’ Not that this has any real bearing on anything. Reeves long ago stopped communicating with reality when she found it didn’t suit her. Instead, we got a mad foray into how wonderful life was going to be, for everyone from working families to the OBR. As Reeves continued her reverie, next to her squatted the Prime Minister, looking like an overboiled ham. The economy has, at its heart, the question of confidence. Looking and listening to these two today, I suspect we are heading for a run on the bank.
Comments