One week on from Donald Trump’s inauguration and all roads lead to the US president, including those that run through UK politics.

Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, did the rounds of the Sunday politics shows to relaunch the Labour ship and her own reputation, after seven months of bad headlines for Keir Starmer’s government.

She had prepared the ground via briefings and interviews with the weekend papers, her main message being that the lessons could be learned from Trump’s “positivity”.

A Labour Chancellor praising the most right-wing president in recent history is not a development many would have foreseen a year ago. Still, it is a measure of how things have changed so far and so fast that Reeves felt the need to grab some of that presidential glow.

Not that Reeves would have called her efforts a relaunch; that would be too negative a word. Yet she has had a torrid time of it lately, with criticism from within the party and without, whether it is for scrapping the winter fuel allowance for millions of pensioners, the low to no growth in the economy, or the soaring cost of debt under her stewardship.

She is hardly the first Chancellor to feel the heat from sections of the media. She is, however, the first woman in the job. Has that been a factor in the kind of criticism levelled at her and the amount of it, or would any male Chancellor be facing the same?

On Sky News’ Sunday with Trevor Phillips, the host nobly ventured where few, if any,........

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