Rachel Reeves can easily make life difficult for Rishi Sunak

There is one thing to be said for Anneliese Dodds: as shadow chancellor, she set the bar very low. Virtually invisible, with few ideas, and a manner designed to send even political obsessives to sleep, her successor Rachel Reeves won’t have to do much to look like an immediate improvement. A wet tea towel would have more impact.

And yet if Reeves wants to make a real impression, there is one move she should make, even though it would require some courage. She should focus on attacking the government from the liberal, pro-consumer right rather than the left – because that’s where the space is.

After a disastrous set of local elections, it is difficult to see why the hapless Dodds should be the most high-profile casualty on the Labour front bench. True, she didn’t set the world alight. Even so, voters in the Red Wall will hardly have abandoned Labour because they didn’t agree with her plan for a ‘bright future for our High Streets ( a ‘fightback fund’, in case it slipped your mind) or her occasional calls for a ‘responsible fiscal framework’.