Neither the PM nor the chancellor is a natural storyteller

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves admitted mistakes had been made during the government's difficult first year when she addressed a private meeting of the parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) after announcing her spending review.

- Andrew Grice, The Independent

Her audience knew what she meant: her catastrophic decision on the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance. Reeves was more honest in private than she is in public. Even after their spectacular U-turn, she and Keir Starmer insist last July's decision was right at the time. In her defence, the chancellor said Labour had been out of power for 14 years and in office for one — an admission, perhaps, that ministers must learn on the job. She won a good reception at the PLP for her £113bn boost to investment projects and her framing of her review, first made in The Independent, as “Labour's choices”. But Reeves’ plea for Labour MPs to “get out and sell” the spending programme in their constituencies landed badly with some in her audience. On Westminster's summer party circuit, they grumbled about a lack of salesmanship from both Reeves and Keir Starmer.