The Guardian view on Rachel Reeves and the EU: the right ambition is held back by outdated red lines | Editorial

The chancellor makes a compelling case for alignment with the EU, but her strategic analysis isn’t matched with political urgency in Downing Street

In an age of attention-grabbing algorithms and amplified outrage on social media, politicians have few incentives to make arguments at any length. That makes Rachel Reeves’s Mais lecture earlier this week refreshing as a detailed exposition of the chancellor’s thinking.

Ms Reeves returned to an argument she first made in opposition, about the growing need for government intervention to mitigate public anxiety and destabilising volatility in a dangerous world. She calls this “securonomics” and it is intended as a rebuttal to the laissez-faire, small-state theories that, as applied by Conservative governments, starved Britain of investment, amplified regional inequalities and created the fallacious case for Brexit.

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