What’s Labour’s governing philosophy? That was the question posed at a dinner I went to with some MPs and former staffers during the party’s annual conference in Liverpool last week. Is Keir Starmer more influenced by the communitarian blend of leftwing economics and socially conservative values that is “blue Labour”, or is he driven by the Fabian democratic socialism that was at the heart of his campaign to become Labour leader?

A prime minister’s motivating beliefs are always pored over by those interested in what direction a particular government might take. But in this case I’m not sure how much it matters, because there is a third governing philosophy dominating Labour that renders almost everything else moot. Fiscal conservatism.

In adopting her Tory predecessor’s fiscal rule – that the national debt should be predicted to fall as a share of GDP in five years’ time – Rachel Reeves essentially manifested the Conservative macroeconomic worldview that growth can be achieved through tax cuts and the private sector alone, rather than through using public investment in key infrastructure to leverage in private investment, a lack of which has held the British economy back for decades. That may have been a good election-winning strategy, but it’s a terrible growth strategy. So it was very welcome to see her hinting last week that she will loosen the definition of debt in that rule to create more scope to borrow to invest; that nugget alone was far more important than anything Starmer said in his speech.

But there is a second fiscal rule that Reeves........

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