The chancellor vowed to renew Britain in her spending review but it all felt like an exercise in cognitive dissonance
W
hen Rachel Reeves took over the Treasury last year, she went out of her way to portray herself as the Ministering Angel of Death. Her stock answer to any question was that “Everything is terrible”. The Tories had bankrupted the country. There was no money for anything. Pensioners were going to have to die to save the rest of the country. Everywhere she looked there was only a world of pain.
And more pain was all she had to offer. But hers would be a Labour pain. A fiscally responsible Labour pain. A pain for which the country had voted in the last election. A pain which everyone would stoically bear in the national interest. The sunlit uplands would have to wait a while.
Only less than a year on and it turns out that people aren’t all that thrilled with being offered a diet of yet more pain. They have had enough of that under the Tories. They had voted for Labour because they hoped they would offer an alternative.
