Rishi Sunak is a problem Labour can’t solve

Given Rishi Sunak spent so much of his Budget pointing out how high spending was – and given he announced some very Labour-friendly measures, such as a surprisingly big cut in the taper rate of Universal Credit from 63 per cent to 55 per cent – whoever responded on behalf of the Opposition was going to have a tricky job. Sir Keir Starmer should have been performing this thankless task, but thanks to his sudden self-isolation after a positive Covid test, it was the Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves who had to do it instead.

It’s not clear how much of the speech was her own and how much of it was pre-written by Starmer. Given the last-minute substitution, it’s fair to assume that most of the themes were chosen by the Labour leader, which explains why Reeves complained about the government’s lack of a plan. This is probably the closest the Opposition has to a slogan at present. The Shadow Chancellor chose to focus more on the growth figures than the announcements, telling the Chamber that ‘the Conservatives are the party of high taxation because the Conservatives are the party of low growth’, and that ‘as well as having the highest death toll in Europe, Britain has suffered the worst economic fate of any other economy.’

Reeves did welcome a few announcements, to Tory titters: the rise in the minimum wage and the Universal Credit taper rate got a mention, while the end to the public sector pay freeze was largely dismissed as being probable ‘smoke and mirrors’, given the fact that the government turns the decision over to a series of independent pay review bodies for each sector.

Sunak is a problem for Labour. He’s slick and confident and has a reasonable chance of being around in politics for a long time, given his ambitions. Their attack line is an old one that they’ve been using throughout the long decade and a bit of opposition: that he is ‘out of touch’. Today Reeves blasted the budget for rewarding the rich, saying: ‘As he hits working people with the highest sustained tax burden in peacetime, he’s giving a tax cut to bankers who like to take short haul flights while sipping champagne.’ The trouble is, in the 11 years of levelling this at Tory chancellors, it doesn’t seem to have helped Labour’s electoral chances. So why stick at it now?