When French General Bosquet watched the 600 men of the Light Brigade charge helplessly into the Russian heavy artillery at Balaclava he muttered ‘c’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre’. Well, history repeats first as tragedy then as farce. And so today, those words came to mind as I watched Rachel Reeves prepare to charge into the grapeshot offered by the House of Lord’s economic affairs committee. Only without the ‘c’est magnifique’ bit.

Perhaps Reeves’ plan is to bore the markets into submission: after all, the stock exchange can’t crash if everyone’s asleep

Behind the Chancellor sat a boy in a lanyard bearing the legend ‘work experience’. One got the sense that it almost would have been kinder to let him have a crack. Reeves began by answering a simple question about the........

© The Spectator