This morning Rachel Reeves has finally admitted something Guido relentlessly called out during the last general election: for all their claims, the Labour manifesto was not fully costed.

At the end of November 2019, John McDonnell published a manifesto costings document, claiming “Every spending commitment is fully costed. Every source of funding is explained.” In response Guido went through the manifesto, pointing out that it was missing over £600 billion in spending commitments, including their ‘national transformation fund’, a 4-day working week, and all their nationalisation programmes. Thankfully the public didn’t buy it as many of them had two years prior…

Ahead of today’s big Starmer speech – in which he says Labour is no longer the party of big spending – the shadow chancellor was asked whether she accepts that in the past the party was such a party:

“Well you look at the last few manifestos Nick, and you know that we had unfunded, uncosted proposals and there won’t be any of that with Keir as leader”

Naturally Corbynite luvvie Owen Jones claimed this “is a straightforward lie”. Guido’s inclined to agree, albeit we’ve already seen examples of uncosted proposals from Sir Keir’s Labour…