Ministers can raise taxes if they come out fighting. But no one in this cowardly Labour government seems able | Aditya Chakrabortty

Ahead of the budget, Rachel Reeves should be out making her arguments. Instead, there is silence – and a huge opportunity for Labour’s opponents

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croll back three years. The person sitting opposite me is yet to take their place at the top of Keir Starmer’s government. Instead, they are a star of the Labour opposition, for whom power advances or recedes with every poll and front page. They have just done a spot of electoral marketing, a photo op at a supermarket 100 or so miles from Westminster, and what they’ve brought home is the politics of the staff.

“They’d all voted for Boris.”

In this parliamentary office of dull green carpet and brown furniture my interviewee wears a mask of disbelief. Workers – backing an Etonian! “One said, ‘He’s a laugh, innee?’ They all laughed.” Fancy giving your vote away so cheaply!