Rachel Reeves has given her much-anticipated speech about what she’d do as the first female chancellor in history. As briefed, her Mais lecture was a look at Labour’s ‘securonomics’ economic policy, with promises to beef up the Treasury, as well as analysis of Nigel Lawson’s 1984 Mais lecture, and an insistence that ‘I don’t want to make this a party political speech any more than you want me to’.

Both Reeves and the Conservatives are dodging questions

Some of the most striking lines were the ones where she reflected on Labour’s own record in government, telling the audience that ‘the analysis on which [New Labour’s policies were] built was too narrow’ and that ‘stability was a necessary, but not a sufficient condition to generate private sector investment.’

She also warned that Britain is unconsciously walking into an era of bigger state spending: not something you’d expect to hear a Labour shadow chancellor say. Reeves said:

The reality is we are already stumbling blindfolded into an era of a bigger state, the unavoidable corollary of sticking plaster politics. The inevitable response when disruption hits an economy with depleted resilience, inadequately prepared for shocks, its public services overstretched, its government unprepared. Securonomics advances not the big state but the smart and strategic state.

She promised a ‘course correction’ for the economy, which would include giving the Treasury more power, after years of the department being sidelined (it has lost power since the days of George Osborne). His successors were often hobbled by Downing Street, including Rishi Sunak, who took on the job because Sajid Javid had refused to have his advisers taken into a unit controlled by No. 10 under Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson. Reeves said:

In 1997, the last Labour government established the Treasury’s Enterprise and Growth Unit, squarely focused on driving economic growth. It was a source of important policy ideas, including the reform of competition law and the creation of a longer-term science funding framework. However, as the Institute for Government noted last month, that Unit is underpowered, its influence diminished compared to twenty years ago. And crucially it is not involved in the management of fiscal events. So we will build on that success, hard-wiring growth into budget and spending review processes, with a reformed and strengthened Enterprise and Growth Unit embedded in the existing fiscal event process.

Her promise not to be too political came early in a lecture after she attacked the ‘unfunded’ tax cuts announced by the Tories, a line she also took when doing Treasury questions in the Commons earlier today (more on that here). She talked about the ‘mini-Budget’, arguing that it ‘dramatically changed the fiscal circumstances in which we must operate’. But what she was rather less keen to linger over in the lengthy lecture was the precise way Labour that will deal with these fiscal circumstances. So both Reeves and the Conservatives are dodging questions on the public spending cuts or tax rises that may have to come after the election.