Rachel Reeves needs to spell out how Labour would achieve higher growth

It is all very well the shadow chancellor attacking the ‘gilded giveaway’ in the Budget but it is a diversion from setting out her plan, writes John Rentoul

Most post-Budget interviews have been free-hit zones for the shadow chancellor (PA)

Rachel Reeves has given herself little room for manoeuvre. She has followed the New Labour example of accepting Conservative tax and spending plans at the election, which means that any extra public spending has to be funded by tax rises or spending cuts elsewhere.

That is what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did before the 1997 election, committing themselves to keep to Tory plans for the first two years of a Labour government. David Blunkett recently told students at King’s College London that, “actually we didn’t – that is a myth; Gordon found money for the day-to-day revenue in schools and massive capital investment in buildings”.

But Labour’s policy going into the 1997 election was strict. Reeves and Keir Starmer claim to be just as strict this time, saying that all promises have to be fully funded. Reeves repeated it this morning in a testing interview on the BBC, when she criticised the government for allowing inflation to drag more people into paying tax, and paying tax at higher rates. She was pressed on whether she would reverse the policy if Labour won the election, and eventually said: “I can’t say, can I, that I would reverse it because I wouldn’t be able to say where the money is going to come from.”