Rachel Reeves will regret promising growth

Growth will be turbo-charged, animal spirits will be unleashed, and foreign investment will flood back into Britain. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves is promising a Thatcher-style revival of the British economy if Labour wins power. But there’s a problem with the pitch that she will deliver in her keynote Mais lecture on the economy today: a Labour government isn’t going to deliver this promised growth. Reeves is setting herself up for failure. 

With at most only a few months left before she takes charge of the Treasury, as she inevitably will, Reeves is making it clear that she expects the UK to return to the 2.5 per cent annual rate of expansion that were normal in the 1980s and 1990s. Growth she promised will be ‘hard-wired’ into the Treasury, ‘so that we can bring together public and private sectors in a national mission, directed at restoring strong economic growth across Britain.’