The Chancellor’s speech yesterday was overshadowed by one she hasn’t yet delivered; that’ll be the Budget, on 26 November. The whole country knows that the November Budget is going to be painful, one way or another, and its inevitable constraints (in fact, just the timing of it) meant that Reeves wasn’t able to say much at the Labour party conference in Liverpool.
Still, that didn’t stop her trying. There was a lot of rhetoric about Labour’s values and several nods to the fact that the Budget will be tough. There was talk of “tough choices ahead” and some gloomy pitch-rolling about “harsh global conditions.” It felt remarkably similar to last year’s pre-Budget mood music that did so much to depress confidence.
One year in, and there’s nowhere to hide.
We shouldn’t be in the least bit surprised that this was primarily a political speech delivered to a frustrated and fractious Labour party membership. She attacked the Tories, a lot, and she threw some daggers at Nigel Farage and Reform, but mostly she tried to defend the past 14 months of Labour government.
A pledge to build school libraries and a classic Labour commitment to “abolish youth unemployment” amounted to the only policy announcements, though some people may be of the view that youth unemployment hasn’t been helped by Labour’s decision to make employment more expensive and higher-risk, not least in hospitality and retail, sectors that traditionally provide entry-level opportunities but which have been battered by higher taxes.
Keir Starmer warns of ‘difficult path’
The Chancellor is not a natural orator, a handicap compounded when delivering a speech of such little substance. The focus was on “renewal and opportunity” – ideas that may turn out to have a short shelf life when the Chancellor delivers the only speech that matters at the end of November.
The Prime Minister is on stage today, and he’ll continue to lay the ground for a punishing November Budget, warning that “the long and difficult path to renewal…requires decisions that are not cost-free or easy.”
The goal? “A fairer country, a land of dignity and respect…wealth creation in every single community, working people in control of their public services, the mindless bureaucracy that chokes enterprise, removed – so we can build and keep on building.”
If it sounds like the kind of speech you’d expect at his first conference as PM rather than his second, that’s because the first year in office is one he’d rather forget.