The first big announcement of Gordon Brown’s chancellorship was, arguably, the single biggest decision and the single biggest moment of his entire time in office.
In a wood-panelled room on Whitehall a few days after being elected, Mr Brown announced that he was making the Bank of England independent – to the shock of many of those present.
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Rachel Reeves‘s first big speech as chancellor happened in the same room today, but lacked the drama or the big-bang surprise of that moment. Rather than announcing a big, unexpected change of British institutions, she instead unveiled a long list of changes to some of the nuts and bolts of the British economy.
But perhaps that was the point. Reforming the planning system is not something one can announce in a single press conference. This country’s inability to build the homes it needs and the roads, railways and power grids it’ll need in future is not something one can solve by making a bit of the Treasury independent. It is a hard job that will take grit, effort and time – if it can succeed at all.
It will involve challenging vested interests across the country, not to mention disappointing millions of voters who rather like the fact that it’s so difficult at present to get planning permission for new flats and buildings.
Calling for traditionally right-leaning reforms
Yet the fact that the chancellor chose this issue – and the broader topic of economic growth – to focus on in her first press conference is telling. Traditionally it’s liberal and right-leaning MPs who have called for planning reform – arguing that regulations and local resistance are holding back economic growth.
That the new Labour government see this as their territory underlines that they intend to occupy some of the topics and issues long abandoned by their opponents.
