Words I never thought I’d write: it wasn’t just standing room only at the side and the back of the hall for Rachel Reeves – it was a proper mosh pit. Close up and sweaty. In the front row, the entire shadow cabinet. Plus Peter Mandelson. New Labour has got its party back. Up on stage were Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner. Of course they were. They are the king and queen of this conference. Rachel is the brains.
This isn’t normal. Generally most people go out of their way to avoid a Reeves speech. Not because she doesn’t have anything much to say – she almost always does – but because a stage is not her natural habitat. She’s not an extrovert. Just very normal. Extensive media training has helped a lot, but even so public speaking is still as much as an ordeal for her as it is for her audience. But these days you can forgive a lot. Sanity beats smooth talking every time. Especially when the person doing the talking is one of the most powerful people in the country.
It was no coincidence that both the panel chair and Mary Portas, the David Cameron-era government retail adviser who had been drafted in as the warm-up act, introduced Reeves as the next chancellor. This was a rare moment of honesty. Mostly the Labour conference has been trying to act humble. Taking nothing for granted. The general election isn’t won until the last vote has been counted. You get the idea. But inevitably the mask occasionally drops. You can feel the centre of government has already shifted to Labour. Labour knows it. The country knows it. The Tories know it.
The pitch from Reeves was simple. Do you really feel better off after 13 years of a Tory government? Only a non-dom or someone who had made a fortune shorting the pound after the Kamikwasi budget could possibly say yes. And who did you trust to run the economy? Jeremy Hunt? Hardly. The man looks terrified every time he has to say a word. He has less idea about macroeconomics than I do. He’s clueless. Even the Tory party has realised that. It’s why he was only given a 10-minute slot at their conference. Just enough time for him to die on his feet. Rishi Sunak must really hate him.
Meanwhile Reeves lives and breathes all this stuff. It takes all sorts. But thank God there are people like her. She goes to bed dreaming of quantitative easing. She’s worked at the Bank of England. She exudes a nerdy calm. Running an economy that’s been bumping along near the rocks doesn’t scare her. Well, maybe a bit. But you just know she will manage. You feel safe with her. That’s the basics of her Securonomics. Labour or Tories? Reeves or Hunt? Unless you’re a masochist, it’s all a no-brainer.
After a video fanfare – shadow chancellors don’t usually get that – Reeves got her first prolonged standing ovation. Just for walking to the podium. She forced an uneasy smile. As if somewhat overwhelmed by the reception. She’s going to have to get used to it. Then she got stuck in with a few of the conference slogans. We will get Britain its future back. We will work to rebuild Britain.
Then a coda. “In chess you learn to think several moves ahead,” she said. For a minute it felt like we might be in for a bit of backstory. My life in chess. But no. Rachel isn’t that comfortable sharing the personal stuff. Instead she moved to Brexit and the Liz Truss disasters. She hadn’t seen them coming. What? Even I had predicted the complete chaos that followed those two. You’d have had to be a halfwit not to. Or a paid-up member of the Institute of Economic Affairs.
There was a brief nod to Bidenomics – “an economy for working people” – before we moved on to the red lines. There would be iron discipline. An iron-clad fiscal process. Everything would be vetted by the Office for Budget Responsibility. This got another standing ovation. Probably the first time a Labour conference has ever stood up to applaud fiscal responsibility. But we live in strange times. Now it is the Tories who can’t be trusted with the economy: Labour who are going to have to do the dirty work of fixing the mess. Foul is fair and all that.
At times this almost felt like a leader’s speech in its breadth – Labour could do a lot worse after Keir – and at others as if she was delivering her first budget a year or so ahead of the game. Conference loved her imposing 20% VAT on private school fees, promising to get rid of ministerial private jets and consultants, and appointing a Covid corruption commissioner. There were a few minor spending commitments – the tax on non-doms got spent yet again – but nothing to frighten the horses. Growth was promised at some unspecified future date. Fiscal responsibility and all that. Many Tories would have killed to have heard a speech like that last week.
Come the end there was yet another standing ovation. One that was only interrupted by a video message from the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney. Britain needed Rachel, he said. His eyes barely open. The most woke man in finance was yet again barely awake. During his time at the BoE his greatest claim was that he had done nothing. Still, it’s not an endorsement Jeremy Hunt is ever going to get. Labour has stolen all the political oxygen.
Or not quite. There’s a longstanding agreement between the political parties not to grab airtime during each other’s conference. Only this year Rish! has been desperate for attention. Gagging to move the dial away from his own failure. It backfired horribly. His BBC Radio 2 interview descended into familiar tetchy exchanges as Jeremy Vine questioned his HS2 decision. Just who had been responsible for the overspend? Sunak then tried to claim that the alternative transport projects had only ever been intended to be “illustrative”. Certainly not to be taken seriously. Mmm.
Earlier in the day, RishGPT had attempted one of his PM Disconnects in Newark. Here, things really fell apart. The perfect Freudian slip. “This country is desperate for change,” he said. It is. And it isn’t him. The change it wants was on view in Liverpool.
• Join John Crace at 8pm GMT on Monday 6 November for a livestreamed Guardian Live event where he will be talking about his forthcoming book, Depraved New World, with fellow satirist Ian Hislop. Tickets available here.
Depraved New World by John Crace (Guardian Faber, £16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, pre-order your copy and save 15% at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
