When he was first jotting down notes over the summer for his Labour conference speech today in Liverpool, could Sir Keir Starmer have possibly imagined the backdrop against which it would be delivered? That he would be presenting his revived party as a government-in-waiting, while Prime Minister Liz Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng — their first days in office overshadowed by the death of the Queen — flailed and faltered as the markets tore into the Government’s sweeping new fiscal strategy?
Yesterday, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, declared that Labour was now “the party of economic responsibility” — after sterling had dropped to an all-time low against the dollar and the markets priced in the assumption that interest rates will rise by six percent in the coming months.
