Will Reeves be brave enough to take on the eco blockers?

On the eve of the election the then shadow minister without portfolio Nick Thomas-Symonds appeared to be getting Labour’s excuses in early. If an incoming Labour government started to look at the books and realised that things were even worse than they had thought, he said, then the new government’s fiscal policy might have to diverge from the Labour manifesto. He was immediately slapped down by Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies who pointed out that the government’s books are not hidden away in a Whitehall cellar – they already are open to whoever wishes to inspect them.

That didn’t stop Rachel Reeves, however, taking up the same theme in her first speech as Chancellor this morning. What she had seen in the past 72 hours, she said, confirmed her suspicion that the new government is inheriting the worst set of finances of any since the second world war.