There hasn’t been a change of tone like it since the freezing bookkeepers in The Muppet Christmas Carol asked Michael Caine’s Ebenezer Scrooge if they could have some more coal for their fire. When he asks, “How would they like to be suddenly unemployed?” they start singing “Heatwave!” in hastily donned beach gear.
In such a similar fashion, Rachel Reeves switched from the gloom of painful choices needed to fill the £22bn black hole to the sunny optimism of a chancellor announcing that good times are just around the corner.
