This chancellor is a picture of restraint holding a spending review with little to spend

Under the shadow of fiscal rules and political backlash, Rachel Reeves is tasked with delivering a plan with nothing in the coffers

- Andrew Rawnsley

Gordon Brown liked to joke that there are only two kinds of chancellors: those who fail and those who get out in time. He went on to be an illustration of a third category: those who are cock of the walk while at No 11, only to come a cropper upon moving to No 10.

As the inventor of the modern spending review, he deployed it as a formidable weapon of control and self-projection. He used the power of the purse strings to delve imperially into the workings of every department, make his social priorities those of the government as a whole, and assert dominance over colleagues, including the nominal First Lord of the Treasury.

Tony Blair was often rather clueless about what his chancellor was up to until the numbers were already at the printers. There were spending arguments - and sometimes the quarrels turned ugly - during the New Labour years. But it wasn't too hard to keep people broadly content because as chancellor Brown presided over sustained economic expansion for the entirety of his decade at the Treasury. The undoing came later, when he had moved next door, with the great financial crash of 2008.

Ever since then, growth has been anaemic, when existent at all. How to be a successful Labour government when the public realm is dilapidated but there is no extra money to spend? That question has haunted Rachel Reeves since she arrived at the Treasury and is the central reason why her approval ratings are so terrible. It is the spectre hanging over the multi-year spending review settlement that she will unveil on 11 June.