On her recent visit to Washington, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves presented herself as the perfect candidate to be the next chancellor in the modern mould: an environmentalist, interventionist and protectionist similar to Joe Biden and Olaf Scholz. Reeves champions what she calls ‘securonomics’, a sister of Bidenomonics with an environmental twist.
But the trouble with Reeves’s approach is that just as she makes plain her direction, much of Europe is heading the other way. Take Finland. Until recently the country was led by Sanna Marin who, with New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, became the face of the international centre-left. Marin was voted out in April’s general election and as of this week Petteri Orpo runs a four-party coalition including the populist Finns party, led by Riikka Purra. It is cutting back public spending, especially welfare payments, and has published an agenda with 12 pages devoted to immigration and integration issues and how to stem the number of arrivals.
An exasperation with high-spending, high-taxing government seems to be the theme across the continent
The centre-right is already in power in neighbouring Sweden, where 27-year-old environment minister Romina Pourmokhtari is rowing back on the more zealous policies of her predecessors.
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