'Goldilocks Britain' needs Reeves to deliver in Davos

In the lead-up to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said in an interview: "We've got to be explicit and say the only way to turn around the UK's growth performance of the last 15 years is attracting greater amounts of private capital."

- JAMES MOORE

And he was unequivocally right.

No doubt chancellor Rachel Reeves will say something to the effect of: “The time to invest in the UK is now” – banging the same drum as Reynolds. But the million – or, rather, the 6 billion – pound question is: do the people who control the growth capital that the nation needs agree with her?

The international investors and multinational corporations sipping champagne and taking to the snowy slopes with their expensive skis aren’t much interested in words. They deal in spreadsheets and forecasts and a hard-headed assessment of where their interests will be best served in terms of returns.

In the same interview with The Observer, Reynolds said the UK was a just-right “Goldilocks country”. The domestic business community would beg to differ. It has been howling about the three policy bears: tax increases, labour market reform and the ever-present monster under the bed known as Brexit.

The latter, at least, isn’t on Labour. But its approach – involving the same counterproductive posturing over “red lines” that the last lot were so fond of – is one of the most quietly disappointing aspects of a government that has shown a troubling tendency to trip over its own shoelaces.