Rachel Reeves and Shabana Mahmood – Labour’s Iron Ladies – made revealing interventions at their party conference. They appear to be scripting a new governing philosophy: fiscal restraint, border control from the state, good behaviour from the public. It’s a message designed to deflect attacks from the right and pre-empt internal criticism. But it will also unsettle Labour’s base and blur the party’s moral line.
Ms Reeves was first up, saying she no longer stands by a pledge made last year not to raise taxes, blaming an uncertain world. That bombshell news was primed for detonation by the chancellor’s insistence that there would be no further softening of her self‑imposed fiscal rules. Last October she had changed them to enable higher investment spending. But the public, she was clear, should expect no such largesse this time round.
