U-turns have become a reflex for Reeves

Delivering a Spring Statement is preferable to announcing policy for flip-flopping Labour Daily Telegraph 03/03/26 The Commons was mostly empty for the Foreign Office Questions that preceded the Spring Statement. Quite understandable. Once all the gangsters, tax exiles and make-up influencers have been repatriated from Dubai, our parliamentarians can do little to affect World War Three.

Instead, it makes sense for them to focus on where they can make a real difference: shouting at each other across the benches. And there are few better opportunities for guffawing than the Spring Statement, perhaps the most pointless parliamentary session of the year. So they steadily filed in, enduring the tedium of questions on irrelevant side issues such as Chagos, Hong Kong and the multi-state war Britain had just joined in the Middle East, while they waited for the main event. As the Budget’s little brother no longer includes anachronistic fripperies such as “policy”, it is purely a homework-marking exercise. MPs argue with an absent higher power, the OBR, like theologians clashing over interpretations of a sacred text. This format suits the Chancellor, who can recount what the computer told her without fear of reprisal. Her numbers tell her she is doing well, and she is inclined to agree. It is much easier than announcing policy, which is fraught for Labour ministers because they invariably have to un-announce it a few days later. As a result, Rachel Reeves enjoyed herself more than usual. With nothing at stake, she rose to the occasion. She grinned up at a young woman in the gallery who may have been her daughter, or perhaps just a fan who settled for the second-best option after missing out on Harry Styles tickets. Reeves’s powder-blue suit was less foreboding than the “vampire’s pyjamas” oxblood she sometimes favours, and so was her version of the news. Interest rates? Down. Borrowing? Down. Unemployment? Will go down after it goes up. Although there were no new spending announcements, there was a giveaway. “The promise that we changed,” she said, before correcting herself to “the change that we promised”. U-turns have become a reflex. “I know that an economy cannot be working if it is delivering for only a few people in a few places,” Reeves said. “The people who keep our country moving deserve a fair day’s pay and honest day’s work.” We wondered who she meant until we remembered that MPs’ wages are to rise to £110,000. In response, a more conventional shadow chancellor might have soberly pointed out that Reeves’s figures came against a background of tax hikes and rising unemployment. Luckily, we had Mel Stride instead. His dander was up. He stood at the despatch box, vibrating with intent, reading from extravagantly colourful notes decorated in a variety of jaunty highlighter shades. Mel Strident, the Stabilo Boss. Written down in his notes, his conclusion, “We Say Go!” was easily legible from the press gallery and possibly from an Iranian drone, but it sounded hollow. The whole exchange had a performative quality. A few basis points here or there will not halt the threat from Reform on the Right and, as the Gorton and Denton by-election last week showed, the Greens on the Left. The bright-blonde Hannah Spencer, its new MP, is hard to miss in the chamber. Her party, rocketing in the polls, will be hard for Labour to ignore. She is a plumber by trade; what is the Spring Statement if not a power shower?