Worked Out? Very Nice?

Rachel Reeves has had a good run as Chancellor of the Exchequer. It has been a long time since George Osborne's six years, and a very long time since Gordon Brown's 10, tenures that would now be inconceivable. Of course, the same could be said of the  six and 10-year Premierships of David Cameron and Tony Blair.

But some things never change. In the Budget of December 1976, Denis Healey and Jim Callaghan delighted Margaret Thatcher by blindsiding the critics of monetarism on the Conservative benches, and the rest is history. Brown's and Alistair Darling's austerity programme made Cameron's and Osborne's credible. And Reeves and Keir Starmer, never mind Liz Kendall and Wes Streeting, have removed any reason why Reform UK should not be at the top of the polls. Reform must be stopped in order to prevent it from doing what, exactly?

Donald Trump and his outriders are again making clear that Trump thought so highly of Starmer that Britain would have little to fear from an American tariff regime. This second Trump Administration is one for the tech bros, echoing Starmer and recalling Blair. Between that and the authoritarianism, of which the same can be said, the affinity is real. The PayPal Mafia even has roots in apartheid South Africa to match those of certain key backers of the Starmer project.