Rachel Reeves takes aim at 'Tory trickle-down economics'

Rachel Reeves’s speech to Labour conference was very warmly received – though her thunder was rather stolen by the rapturous reception for Ed Miliband shortly before. The shadow chancellor made her refrain ‘it is time for a government that is on your side, and that government is a Labour government’.

Like her other frontbench colleagues, she took care to be upbeat about the future, rather than merely focusing on how dreadful things are at the moment. She talked about the potential that British workers had, saying: ‘The world is changing fast but the British capacity for enterprise for innovation and for hard work remains undimmed.’ She claimed that a Labour government would oversee ‘cranes going up, shovels in the ground, the sounds and sights of the future arriving’. Part of that vision was one of green jobs, with Reeves pledging she would be Britain’s ‘first green chancellor’.