At the Labour party conference in Liverpool in 2016, when Ed Balls was strutting his stuff on Strictly, Rachel Reeves was asked what she would do on day one if she became the first female chancellor of the exchequer.
Then in self-imposed exile on the backbenches of Jeremy Corbyn’s party, Reeves nevertheless had an answer to hand. She would fix the UK’s broken childcare system, she said: good for women, good for the economy.
No one present was left in any doubt that Reeves had already imagined being the first woman to take charge of the Treasury. Eight years on, if the polls are right, her long-held ambition is about to be realised.
