Deregulation, streamlining planning decisions, and clamping down on judicial reviews – you might have found much of what Rachel Reeves said on Wednesday a bit dry and abstract.
But keep reading, because it is also a very big deal, and years down the track will probably be looked back on – for good or for ill – as a definitive moment for Sir Keir Starmer‘s Labour government.
That’s because, on Wednesday, the chancellor finally laid out in no uncertain terms the scale of her ambition to deliver economic growth and the scale of the fights this government is prepared to have to achieve it.
Politics latest: Clashes over government growth plans
The promises were bold. She was going to unlock planning and cut down on judicial reviews in order to build 1.5 million homes across the UK.
Her government was going to crack on with the OxCam Arc to create “Europe’s Silicon Valley” with a new rail line to connect Oxford and Cambridge, better roads, and up to 18 new towns along that corridor.
And she was going to be the first chancellor to get planning approval for a third runway at Heathrow before the end of this parliament.
It’s quite the list: The third runway for Heathrow was first mooted in 2001 before being bogged down in years of political wrangling and legal challenges.
The OxCam Arc – first mooted in 2003 – was a key priority of successive Conservative governments, only to be shelved by Boris Johnson in 2021 as he shifted focus to “levelling up” in the north of England.
As for house building, prices remain well over five times average earnings, with previous governments’ building targets consistently missed.
Courageous or audacious? Take your pick.
What was clear from this speech is that Ms Reeves thinks she can succeed where so many politicians have failed and overcome significant opposition – from environmentalists, NIMBYs, MPs, her own Labour mayors – to do what countless other politicians have failed to do before her.
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Many will be betting she and Sir Keir will fail, and even if they succeed in getting these projects off the ground, it will take years, even decades, for the benefits to be felt – which isn’t much use for Sir Keir at the ballot box in four years.
The political calculation is that there will always be challenges and facing those down with a huge parliament majority is easier than without. The government also hopes the battles and the beginnings of development will be enough of a proof point to win over voters.
“[The long length of delivery] was always going to be the challenge, there’s no alternative,” said one Treasury figure. “But if people see change – cranes in the sky, new buildings – that will give them faith.”
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Without those cranes in the sky, Labour has no hope at all in turning around bad polling because the entire Starmer project rests on growth. Without it, Labour won’t be able to invest in public services and improve people’s living standards. That’s why this is a definitive moment – the government have no option but to pull this off.
Critics will argue that if recent months are anything to go by, this Labour government doesn’t look like a bunch of politicians that can succeed in delivering growth where others have not.
The budget, which Ms Reeves again on Wednesday defended as being a necessary part of delivering economic stability, dented confidence and hit employers with a £25bn tax bill they were not expecting. Last week Sainsbury cut 3,000 jobs in the face of a “challenging cost environment”, while today Tesco announced 400 job cuts shortly after the chancellor wrapped up her speech.
Meanwhile, there are contradictions. On the one hand, the government says it wants to remove barriers to growth and the chancellor announced on Wednesday she will publish an action plan in March to rip up anti-growth regulations.
But on the other, the government is facing criticism from businesses that growth will be hampered and jobs hit by the new workers’ rights package Labour is pushing through – something the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch took aim at on Wednesday during Prime Minister’s Questions.
The government’s own analysis says it could cost businesses up to £5bn a year. As Ms Reeves talks about growth, the Conservatives hit back with cries of indignation over taxes and regulation.
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Ask businesses, and they will concur on this – saying the Conservatives have a point.
But what Ms Reeves wanted to do today was show that she wants to move past the gloom of last autumn and give businesses something to think about beyond the consequences of tax rises, in the hope that it might change the perception that this Labour government is all about tax and spend.
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This was a chancellor openly borrowing from the Conservative playbook of supply-side reform in order to find economic growth, while Sir Keir wrote an article in The Times in which he compared his endeavour on deregulation with the Thatcherite financial reforms that precipitated the 1980s big bang.
Of course, the big unknown is whether Ms Reeves and Sir Keir will really follow through. Many past Conservative governments folded in the face of fierce resistance. They say they are up for the fight – and it is one they can ill afford to lose.
