During his early years as chancellor, George Osborne became known as “the submarine” for his habit of surfacing only for set-piece events (and retreating under water at the first sign of trouble). Gordon Brown, for similar reasons, was nicknamed “Macavity” after the cat “who wasn’t there”.
After the past fortnight, there is little prospect of Rachel Reeves acquiring such a sobriquet. The Chancellor has been omnipresent: in China, at Davos, on Laura Kuenssberg’s sofa, addressing the PLP, and today delivering a speech in Oxfordshire. Throughout this tour, her message has echoed the opening line of the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe”: “I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want”. The answer, of course, is growth.
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