Did Rachel Reeves just bury New Labour economics… and pave the way for ‘sirkeironomics’?

If Labour wins the upcoming general election, the honeymoon period could be very short, writes Andrew Grice. But will the shadow chancellor’s mantra of ‘securonomics’ be enough to see them through?

Until Reeves shows her full hand, the doubts will persist (Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire)

Waiting for Labour’s tax and spending plans is like waiting for Godot. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, let Rachel Reeves off the hook a few hours before her big economic speech by hinting he wanted to stage an autumn statement before a possible October general election.

That gave the shadow chancellor some cover to again keep her cards close to her chest – although she wouldn’t have played them on Tuesday night anyway. Reeves knows a lot of what is written on those cards, but she’s not telling us. There were a few clues in her speech. She likened today to 1979, when Margaret Thatcher won power, but as I watched her hour-long, 8,000-word Mais lecture, I kept thinking the real parallel is with 1997. Labour doesn’t “do” that: Keir Starmer would excommunicate anyone who dared to utter the L-word: landslide.

Yet Reeves’s speech had much more to do with New Labour than Thatcher. Indeed, after grabbing pre-speech headlines comparing her to the Iron Lady, Reeves rowed back. Answering questions after her speech, she said she joined the Labour Party because she disagreed with so much of what Thatcher did to Britain. Precisely the same retreat Starmer made after praising Thatcher and then, after a Labour backlash, insisting he didn’t support her actions.