The Sun got an interesting briefing from the Shadow Chancellor’s office on Sunday night, revealing that Rachel Reeves is now backing a freeze of fuel duty to “help hard-pressed motorists”. Freezing fuel duty given current rates of inflation would cost the taxpayers around £6 billion…

Reeves told the paper:

“With so many families and businesses reliant on their cars, the government must rule out yet another fuel duty rise at the Budget to ease some of those pressures and prevent yet another shock to our economy.”

However given major questions about whether voters can trust a word Sir Keir’s Labour says, Reeves will struggle to explain why she appears to have performed such a volte-face on the issue of freezing fuel duty.

Responding to Rishi’s March 2020 budget, the then-backbencher Reeves slammed the government for spending £2.7 billion on “yet another fuel duty freeze”, despite COP26 in Glasgow being just around the corner:

“Yet what have we had in the Budget today? We have had £27 billion to invest in 4,000 miles of roads, and the fuel duty freeze, which costs £2.7 billion, but just £6 billion for local transport and a mere £140 million for a one-year extension of the electric vehicle grants. Frankly, that does not speak of a Government who recognise the scale of the challenge we face”

Later on, she tweeted that “yet another fuel duty freeze” was the sign the government “don’t recognise the challenge of the climate emergency.”

It wasn’t just Reeves slamming the government’s now-relatively modest spending on a fuel duty freeze. Lisa Nandy, the now-Shadow Levelling Up secretary also slammed the decision given:

“Car usage is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions – but instead of investment in low carbon transport, they’ve frozen fuel duty.”

We’re now supposed to believe the Labour Party sincerely believes in spending £6 billion on freezing fuel duty. Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides – provided voters can afford to fill up their cars…