Reeves is finally centre stage - but what if her sums don't add up?

IT'S finally Rachel Reeves's week after a lot of Keir-first communications from Labour.

- Anne McElvoy

"I can see Rachel smiling," noted Sir Keir Starmer indulgently at the manifesto launch last week. "Because she's done all the costings."

"Too right," might well have been the thought that flashed through Reeves's rigorously coiffured head. On social media and billboards across London, she is pictured in a stem black jacket a symbol of Labour's pitch for economic stability and her confident progression as the first woman to hold the chancellor's job.

In many ways, this totemic image of rectitude makes Reeves even more exposed than her boss to questions about how the fuzzy maths of a likely incoming government's tax and spend plans add up-and what happens if they don't.

It is, after all, her maths and her decision to accept a stringent corset on spending introduced by the Tories - namely that overall debt should fall year on year as a proportion of GDP by the fifth year of official forecasts. That means that Labour will rely on a spurt of growth or tax rises. And life in government is always more expensive than parties' carefully trimmed manifesto projections.