Can Rachel Reeves defeat the anti-growth coalition in the cabinet?
Can Rachel Reeves defeat the anti-growth coalition in the cabinet?
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Editorial: The chancellor set the right direction in her speech – a long-term focus on the causes of prosperity. The question is whether Labour can carry it through. Rachel Reeves delivered a bold speech that set a clear sense of direction for the Labour government. She pretended that there are no contradictions between going for economic growth and other objectives that matter to her party, but the implication was that she was prepared to overcome internal opposition to deliver in the national interest. If that turns out to be true, we will look back at this speech as a significant moment.
Of course, many of the benefits of the policies that she announced will take a long time to materialise. There is nothing wrong with that. What was wrong was that Ms Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer sometimes appeared to suggest that there were easy answers to the nation’s problems – it was just that the Conservatives failed to adopt them.
In this speech, the chancellor started to set out what could indeed be the work of a decade. If she means what she says, her focus on the long term will be welcome. The Labour criticism of recent Tory chancellors is that they chopped and changed too quickly as they sought short-term fixes to try to avoid the electorate’s wrath.
If Ms Reeves sustains the acceleration of planning decisions and tilts them in favour of growth; if she is serious about getting regulators out of the way of entrepreneurs; and if she gets her way against cabinet colleagues who are working against growth – then this could be a long-termism that The Independent could support.
