
How big will Rachel Reeves’s state be?
Every year the Mais lecture, hosted by Bayes Business School, gives its speaker a chance to lay out their vision for the economy. It’s how we knew Rishi Sunak would prioritise fiscal prudence over tax cuts long before he entered Number 10. Last night it was Rachel Reeves’s turn. The message seemed to be: build up the state to get it out of the way As expected, there were no big policy announcements about what Labour might do in power. But that wasn’t the point of the speech. Reeves formally committed to keeping Jeremy Hunt’s fiscal rule, to get debt falling as a percentage of GDP in a rolling five-year forecast. This
