The chancellor gave more detail about how she will prioritise investment spending, especially in infrastructure.
The plans she has inherited are for a cut in the share of the economy devoted to public investment.
“Growth is the challenge… and investment is the solution,” she said.
We are heading towards some changes to the rules on government borrowing in order to allow more investment.
This should work with the newly announced Industrial Strategy, to be released with the Budget on 30 October. It might also help with levering in significant foreign investment at a crucial summit next month.
It was a coincidence, but the chancellor’s speech came on the two-year anniversary of Liz Truss’s mini-Budget. If anyone forgot the auspicious date, the former PM popped up with a specially crafted video to say that the Kwarteng/Truss fiscal plans should have been implemented in full.
This was fortuitous for the chancellor, as her speech defined herself as a type of anti-Truss.
The Truss legacy played an important part in delivering Reeves to her position, with a commanding Commons majority. Both shared an ambition to increase British growth. The tough decisions Reeves says she needs to make at the Budget are the contrast to the Truss episode.
But could it be that the Budget’s bite, will now prove to be significantly less painful than its bark?
