Rachel Reeves is running out of excuses

The Chancellor addressed her backbench troops last night, ahead of Wednesday’s Budget. Rachel Reeves’ remarks sought to impress upon her colleagues the importance of unity amid a likely onslaught of criticism. ‘Politics is a team sport,’ she said. ‘We have to stick together if we’re going to deliver the change, and get the second term that we want.’ She stressed that her Budget is a ‘package’, which will contain both good and bad choices. ‘It’s not a pick and mix – you can’t say you like the cola bottles but you don’t like the fruit salads. It comes together as a whole.’ That can be read as a warning to Labour MPs who have a propensity to publicly criticise unpopular individual policies.

Reeves’ speech also centred on her usual rogues’ gallery of villains. She attacked the ‘incredibly destabilising’ leaks that have befallen the Budget, bemoaning how there have been ‘lots of scare stories about what I may or may not do’. After a series of weekend interviews in which she complained of being underestimated, she again criticised the ‘misogyny’ she faces. ‘I’ll show the media, I’ll show the Tories’, she told Labour MPs. ‘I will not let them beat me. I’ll be there on Wednesday, I’ll be there next year and I’ll be back the year after that.’ It was a combative performance in which the Chancellor again restated her three priorities: cutting the cost of living, reducing NHS waiting times and reducing the amount Britain spends on its debt.

Labour MPs duly gave Reeves the obligatory cheers and applause. Yet, privately, some have growing doubts – particularly about the downgrading of the UK’s growth prospects. ‘We went through all this twelve months ago,’ says one member of the Labour Growth Group. ‘I worry she [the Chancellor] has not done enough yet to change the pattern.’ For some MPs in rural seats, Reeves’ first Budget thirteen months ago proved to be a bruising experience after she announced major reforms to farmland inheritance tax – a change long demanded by some in the Treasury.

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Even government aides now admit that there was too much deference towards the so-called ‘Treasury orthodoxy’ in Reeves’s first few months in power. To help resolve this, Reeves subsequently overhauled her team and brought in a series of new hires. Plenty boast ties to the left-leaning Resolution Foundation, including Torsten Bell, Dan Tomlinson and Baroness Shafik. ‘This is the Resolution Foundation’s Budget,’ one source told the Sunday Times. ‘This is an experiment in letting those people run riot.’ The results of said experiment will be laid out tomorrow.

The Chancellor’s call for unity is only likely to be heeded if her second Budget demonstrates that she and her team have improved their political touch and ability to spot major potential bombs. ‘Loyalty is a two-way street,’ notes one Labour aide. With her personal approval ratings now at -52, Reeves will not get many more chances if she continues on her current underwhelming trajectory.