Is it too early to tell Rachel Reeves 'I told you so'?

‘I told you so’ – the most irritating four words in the English language, dripping with self-satisfaction and schadenfreude. So, forgive me. A year ago I – or rather, ‘we’, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee of which I was chair – told you, the great British public, that the UK risked economic catastrophe. A cross-party group including Corbynites and Thatcherites, we came to one crushing conclusion: unless this government took tough decisions this Parliament, the UK’s sky-high debt might well become unsustainable.

A year on, what had been the subject of intense but largely ignored scrutiny in Lords’ Committee Room 2A has, at last, become the dominating issue. Being interviewed at Labour conference this morning, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has dared the country to ‘judge me on my r