Rachel Reeves’ killer question of Hunt’s Autumn Statement

After the disaster that befell Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget, his successor Jeremy Hunt was never likely to want to pull many rabbits out of hats in his Autumn Statement.

In fact, seldom has a pitch been rolled so extensively before a Chancellor’s statement as it was before today’s, both via a string of briefings emanating from within the Treasury about its likely contours and contents and the seeking of statements of advance approval from independent scrutineers.

Hunt was at pains to quote the NHS chief executive as confirming the extra resources for healthcare should be sufficient to allow the service to discharge its core responsibilities. More crucially still, he deferred to – and referred to – the forecasts of the Office for Budget Responsibility time and again.

Financial market reaction – or the relative lack of it – indicates that Hunt has already succeeded in his goal of showing that the 'Reasonables' are back in charge of the economic levers. 

His protection of the very expensive pension triple lock, along with the blunt message to older voters that 'this Government is on your side', was surely driven by brute political survival instincts: without the grey vote turning out for them in 2024 the Tories will be sunk.  

Hunt’s prioritising of extra spending for the NHS and education – along with unveiling new windfall taxes and a big reduction in the threshold for paying the 45 per cent top rate of tax to just over £125,000 – were designed to show voters that fairness in sharing out the pain of austerity was a key guiding principle too.

One suspects Hunt won't be successful in this mission given the bravura performance of Rachel Reeves in her reply. Not since Gordon Brown faced off against Ken Clarke in the early 1990s has a Labour shadow chancellor been so effective at dismantling the Tory economic record.

Whereas her predecessor Anneliese Dodds utterly failed the 'can you see this person as chancellor?' test, Reeves comprehensively passed it today. Not only had she worked to improve her presentational performance, in order to buttress rather than detract from her natural authority on economic matters, but she also showed the confidence to take on the Tories in territory Labour often shies away from.

One of her most effective lines was borrowed from Ronald Reagan, when she said voters would be asking: 'Are me and my family better off with a Conservative government? And the answer is no.'

She also attacked Rishi Sunak for devising schemes during the Covid pandemic that had been wide open to abuse and fraud, including by foreign crime gangs as well as Tory 'friends and donors'. In doing so, she daringly pitching Labour as a more responsible prospective steward of public funds. 'The country is sick of being ripped-off by the Tories. We want our money back,' she railed.

And on Hunt’s failure to abolish non-dom status – about which Labour has seemed so suspiciously well-informed in recent days that one almost wonders if there is a 'chatty rat' within the Treasury – she ventured close to outright patriotic populism: 'If you make Britain your home you should pay your taxes here.'

In recent years, the Tories have won all the prizes going for broadening the range of people occupying the key positions in British public life. But there has not yet been a female chancellor of the exchequer.

Should Reeves continue to perform at her current level, it is likely she rather than anyone on the Conservative benches will be the first. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that, as far as the outcome of the next election is concerned, Reeves has suddenly become the most important politician in the country.