In German they have a concept whose equivalent is sorely needed in discussion of British politics: ‘anti-talent’. It means exactly what it sounds like – the opposite of talent, something any given person is uniquely ill-suited to doing.

The Chancellor criticised ‘the nagging voices of decline’, which, when you’re standing a matter of inches away from Sir Keir Starmer, is either very brave or very stupid

Labour has an innate ability to recognise and reward anti-talent, by putting the very people least suited to run departments in charge of them. While Yvette Cooper is in charge of charming our foreign allies, Rachel Reeves, who is increasingly becoming the Florence Foster Jenkins of gilt yields, runs the Treasury. Today both spoke at the Labour conference, an anti-talent double header in

See Full Page