The Rolls-Royce politician gearing Labour up for power
Why Labour’s ‘RR’, Rachel Reeves, and her classy economic model are winning over big business, by Simon Walters
She shares the same initials as Rolls-Royce, for years a byword for the best in British business.
Now shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves is being credited for transforming Labour’s economic policies from a broken down Marxist jalopy under Jeremy Corbyn to an impressive Rolls-Royce machine under Keir Starmer.
If, as seems increasingly likely, Labour wins the next election, as far as those in big business and the City are concerned, it will be because of Labour’s “RR”.
Former CBI boss Paul Drechsler singled her out for praise in The Independent on Monday, saying she was largely responsible for the “dramatic” shift in attitudes towards Labour in company boardrooms.
Mr Drechsler, appointed the government’s skills tsar when David Cameron was prime minister, said: “The change in the way Labour is perceived can be attributed largely to Rachel Reeves. A lot of influential people in business feel the same as I do.”
Another senior City figure who met Reeves recently said: “She exudes authority, can do her sums and can be trusted.”
Once unkindly dubbed “boring, snoring”, Reeves’s voice may be a little less well-tuned than the soft purr of a vintage Silver Cloud, but it has a similarly soothing effect these days.
A former Bank of England economist, she has carefully avoided offering hostages to fortune with wild spending pledges.
Even Reeves was surprised to win a mid-speech ovation at last year’s Labour conference when she said it should be the “party of fiscal and economic stability”.
She didn’t say that in the Corbyn years Labour had been the exact opposite: she didn’t need to.
Similarly, she says her top two priorities are making Labour “the party that is trusted with public finances and the party of wealth creation, not just of redistribution of it”.
It is the sober talk of a bank manager, not the rousing words of a red flag-waving socialist.
An example of the extent to which Reeves is beating the Tories at their own game is the way Rishi Sunak caved in to her repeated demands for a windfall tax on energy companies.
It was a lesson she learnt as British girls’ chess champion, aged 14. “I was a very aggressive chess player, attack, attack, attack – all the time!” she has said.
There is no doubt that her task in winning over Labour doubters has been aided by the fruit-loop economic idiocy of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng.
Labour MPs say the doorstep response from voters in marginal constituencies has changed dramatically since Truss and Kwarteng’s crazy financial experiment crashed the economy.
“People say mortgage rates are more likely to stay low under us than under the Tories – you didn’t used to hear that,” says one Labour MP.
While careless Truss flails about blaming the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for her economic car crash, cautious Reeves has defended it.
Labour will have no truck with those who “rubbish” the OBR, she says.
Not everything Reeves says is music to the ears of those in business and commerce.
Such as her vow to slap a £2bn tax on private schools by scrapping their charitable tax status and raising taxes for high earners, both of which will affect them far more than others.
Reeves claims she can do this while still achieving the economic growth that Truss promised before snuffing it out.
Reconciled to the near inevitability of a Labour election victory, and impressed by Reeves, big business and the City are prepared to give her a chance.
It is often claimed that Rolls-Royce cars “never break down”.
If Labour wins power only time will tell whether Rachel Reeves’ economic policies prove as slick and reliable.
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