Labour’s credibility trap

If the Labour Party had a two-word pitch going into the last general election, it was “economic credibility”. Rachel Reeves, the then shadow chancellor, said it at every turn. Labour was “the party of economic credibility”, said Ms Reeves in one interview. “Out of the wreckage of Tory misrule, Labour will restore our economic credibility,” declared the shadow chancellor in another speech. There would be no tax rises on working people, Ms Reeves told Middle England. There would be no spending cuts, she reassured her base. And there would be iron-clad fiscal rules, she warned one-and-all.