Rachel Reeves’s economic vision is coming into focus – a year too late | Rafael Behr

Keir Starmer has not yet celebrated his first anniversary in Downing Street .

The government already moves with the plodding gait of a caretaker administration.

Meagre savings to the exchequer were procured at an exorbitant price in political capital.

The idea was to advertise Britain as a beacon of orderliness in a chaotic world.

Labour failed to sustain its status as the nation’s preferred alternative to the Tories almost as soon as the election was over.

The campaign foregrounded safety and reassurance, defining change primarily as a switch of personnel at the top.

In the absence of a clear agenda for the future, Starmer and Reeves ended up owning everything that is desultory about the present.