Brexit, the environment, energy bills … it’s hard to tell Labour and Tory policies apart

‘Rachel Reeves hopes to convince the public that there is a better way to do Brexit.’ Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Back in the 1950s, a term was coined to describe the consensus that had allegedly emerged over the way to run the economy in the postwar world. An amalgam of the names of two chancellors of the exchequer – Rab Butler for the Tories and Hugh Gaitskell for Labour – it became known as Butskellism.

Dispute has raged ever since over whether there was any such thing, yet while it is true that the two main parties had their differences – often serious ones – on certain broad principles they did agree: a mixed economy, the permanence of the welfare state and the need to maintain full employment.