Her departure, in order not to be a distraction to the business of government, after a week of being a distraction from the business of government, will make the business of government harder.
Number 10’s change of heart should be considered a win for all those in the Conservative Party who have long been devoted to the beaver cause.
Even if Keir Starmer is reluctant to reshuffle, the first rumours that one is in the offing are emerging.
The Bank has joined a string of independent forecasters in downgrading growth expectations, making it even more likely that the OBR will similarly slash its expectations when it pushes its next assessment in March.
What is Islamophobia? Like obscenity, good art, or a good speech by Kemi Badenoch, is one supposed to know it when they see it?
As welcome as the Chancellor’s change of tone after six months of doom and gloom might be, her pro-growth rhetoric doesn’t get a single shovel in the ground.
Legions of one-term MPs may wonder why they bothered to be elected if their only job is to vote through exactly the sort of ‘austerity’ policies they entered politics to oppose. But you can’t ignore the Gods of the Copybook Headings.
For Starmer to be as radical as he suggests he will require a personality transplant.
There is no point in trying to extricate ourselves from being Washington’s vassal only to become Beijing’s. Net zero at all costs is a recipe for national humiliation.
It’s another example of a Conservative revolution running out of steam: the outward appearance of the totemic reform programmes of the 1980s, but very little of the substance.
I do seem to be more aware than the Cabinet that making life more difficult for the private sector is unlikely to be good for growth.
The chances that Reeves does not make it to the next election, or even out of the next two years, are higher than you might think.
If Gray had hoped she could push out the politicos, piggyback on a pliable PM, and hold the sway over Whitehall she had assumed was rightfully hers, she has been proven catastrophically wrong.
Reeves may get her definitional distortions past the OBR. But no Chancellor can fool the Gods of the Copybook Headings.