Rachel Reeves sounds surprisingly perky. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has, of course, been forced – we may think, through gritted teeth – to say nice things she cannot possibly have believed about the Trumpian tariff programme that threatens to take a guillotine to her beloved fiscal headroom without her being able to do a damn thing about it. But, interviewed by the Times, she professed herself encouraged by better-than-expected statistics on consumer spending. And she also showed signs of doing something rather interesting, i.e. rolling the pitch for a bit of a climbdown on youth mobility.
‘No plans for a youth mobility scheme’ had been the line before the election. Now she says: ‘We do want to see better trading relationships between our countries and we do want to enable young people from Europe and the UK to be able to work and travel overseas.’ She’s still having, it seems obvious, Herbert-Lom-in-Pink-Panther-style panic attacks at the thought of the Reform vote, so she caveats the thought immediately by saying, ‘we’ve got to get the balance right, because I do not want to see net migration increasing.
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