Rachel Reeves’ slowly-slowly growth strategy won’t provide the billions public services need now | Josh Ryan-Collins

Business will welcome Labour's message of stability, but it may be too little, too late for our ailing health and education systems

There was a distinct lack of rabbits out of the hat in Rachel Reeves's speech at the Labour party conference. Setting up a commission to investigate dodgy deals during the Covid-19 pandemic and tightening up government use of consultancies and private jets played well to conference, but will raise just a few billion pounds - a negligible figure.

Instead, Reeves concentrated on ramming home the key messages of the leadership: stability, security and, more than anything else, growth. It is certainly a message voters are in need of hearing after one of the most tumultuous periods in British economic history since the global financial crisis. It is also a message that business probably wants and needs to hear after yet another U-turn on transport infrastructure in the shape of the abandoning of the Birmingham-to-Manchester leg of HS2.

Josh Ryan-Collins is associate professor of economics and finance at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose