Five takeaways from Rachel Reeves’s Mais speech

We live in an age of stunts and soundbites so it was refreshing to hear a politician stand up and, for the best part of an hour, explain their political philosophy to an audience savvy enough to shred it. That’s what Labour’s Rachel Reeves did at last night’s Mais lecture. 

She summoned the ghosts of heterodox leftists Karl Polanyi, Joan Robinson and Marie Curie to explain that Britain stands on the brink of a global economic regime change just as big as the one begun in 1979, that the Tories have left us bystanders, and that Labour is the only party that can make it happen. 

Though she didn’t mention Margaret Thatcher by name (and never planned to, I understand) the speech, and the fiscal rules it outlined, has generated ‘Iron Lady’ headlines. But if we look behind these, there are five takeaways that embody the logic of her argument.

1.