Rachel Reeves has just wrapped up her annual conference speech, and – if rumours are to be believed – her last conference speech as Chancellor. The 30-minute tirade sounded like a begging letter pleading with Keir Starmer not to sack her, all while sounding like a demented Dalek hoping no one would think about pending tax hikes.
The Chancellor’s voice appears to be lowering at the same rate as her approval ratings, sounding less like Margaret Thatcher and more like Theresa May in the moments before she starting crying while resigning. Similarly with this Chancellor, you never know how far away she is from tears. Reeves’s speech was notable for breaking the one big taboo present at this conference so far, as she repeated over and over again that one thing other Labour ministers have been at pains to avoid: the c-word.
Alas, this was not some Gordon Ramsay-esque swear fest, but Reeves deciding to dedicate the vast majority of her speech to attacking the Conservative Party.
For a political movement polling somewhere between irrelevant and utterly detested, Kemi Badenoch’s party seemed to dominate her rant, as she replayed all the classics: four prime ministers, seven chancellors, partying in Downing Street, dodgy Covid contracts.
It was like Peter Kay bombing his set and just repeating the words “garlic bread” over and over again until he got a round of applause. Reeves claimed that Liz Truss’s Mini Budget had consigned the party to “utter irrelevance”, which was why she mentioned them every 90 seconds.
The constant bombardment of the Tory record felt reminiscent of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese WW2 soldier who continued fighting for 29 years after the war’s end.
There’s a reason Reform has been the go-to punching bag in Liverpool this week, with Nigel Farage’s name mentioned with the repetition of Big Ben’s bongs.
But for Rachel Reeves, her section on Reform seemed bolted on, as if her speechwriters realised last night that they should probably have something to say about the party leading the last 100-odd opinion polls.
Her attacks on both the Tories and Reform, however, felt positively limp-wristed when compared to the most obvious slap down of Andy Burnham this week.
The beleaguered Chancellor warned: “There are still people who peddle the idea that we can cast off restraints on spending. They’re wrong – dangerously so. There is nothing progressive, nothing Labour about spending £1 in every £10 on debt interest.”
Clearly an attack on the Manchester Mayor’s demands for Britain to stop being reliant on foreign investors and dictated to by the bond markets.
It was not an inspiring speech. It was a robust defence of Reevesonomics, as the Chancellor desperately hoped no one in attendance would think about her pending £40 billion tax hike coming at the end of November.
She told Labour delegates that she had been faced with a stark choice entering the Treasury last year, between investment or decline.
14 months later we have our answer: both.
