It’s this season’s fashion accessory for every politician. Outside election campaigns, press conferences usually signal major set piece events or a national emergency. Now you can’t move for them. Reform have had four inside a week with another one lined up for tomorrow. Even Kemi Badenoch has been at it with a bizarre outdoors show-and-tell last Thursday. Blink and you would have missed it.
Tuesday was Rachel Reeves’s turn. Her Lance Corporal Jones “Don’t Panic! Don’t Panic!” moment. Normally a chancellor takes a vow of silence in the weeks leading up to the budget. Locked away in the Treasury, head down over economic forecasts, anxious to give nothing away.
