Rachel Reeves is turning into Gordon Brown

Rachel Reeves is beginning to look awfully like Gordon Brown. Study the actions of this government so far and you would hardly say that deregulation was its big idea. True, Keir Starmer did claim at his investment summit last month that he was going to slash red tape. Angela Rayner wants planning laws relaxed to allow new homes on the green belt and Ed Miliband wants wind farms, solar farms and pylons just about everywhere – without the locals being given much of a say.

But look at the Employment Rights Bill, the legislation being piled on landlords, the law to impose duties on village halls and the like to prepare for terror attacks, the bill to ban sales of cigarettes to anyone born after a certain date, the bill to ban gay conversion therapy.