Rachel Reeves doesn’t want you to know exactly how her economic experiment ends

Keir Starmer has made a big deal about Labour’s commitment to Artificial Intelligence this week – but we all kind of knew that just by looking at his choice of Chancellor, because ‘ intelligence seems distinctly artificial.

We now know Red Rachel’s CV was about as accurate as an OBR fiscal projection, and we also know, if you’ll forgive the zeitgeisty nod to Bob Dylan’s current resurgence, a hard economic rain’s gonna fall. And it’s not going to be pretty.

And yes Reeves and Starmer must have been popping the own-brand cava last night as they got wind the consumer prices index (CPI) fell to 2.5 percent in December. But those figures aren’t fooling anyone. Reeve’s economic inadequacy hasn’t quite kicked in yet… so the British Retail Consortium are saying two thirds of businesses will have to hike prices when they do, and many other firms will just close their doors come April.

Reeves will be under pressure to break her own fiscal rules (which ill-advisedly backed at Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon) and the prospect of a second budget to correct the errors of the last one will become unavoidable.

So it was odd that Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch seemed to go so easy on Reeves and her catastrophic economic blundering. In truth Kemi took a blunderbuss to the despatch box when she should have packed a sniper rifle.

It’s understandable.

This Labour Government have got so many things so wrong so fast there are just too many tempting targets – and Kemi tried to hit them all.

So she had a half-hearted pop at the handling of the economy, then moved on to what, admittedly, are just as important, damning issues.

She picked the supine handing-over of the Chagos Islands – seven tiny atols in British Indian Ocean territory (clue in the name there) whose strategic importance to global peace is in inverse proportion to their size.

“There is no way we should be giving over British territory. He is rushing the deal which will be disastrous and which will land the tax payer with a multi-billion pound bill,” she said.

It was a fair point of course but needed expanding – the really terrifying issue of course being that in a very few short years it will be a launch pad for the bombers of China’s People’s Liberation Army.

But no, instead she skipped to yet another godawful Labour crisis, that of “corruption minister” Tulip Siddiq, who – spectacularly – is being investigated for corruption as part of a Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission investigation into Siddiq, her auntie Hasina and other members of their family for alleged embezzlement of billions of pounds connected to a Russian-funded nuclear power plant.

Now, for clarity, Tulip maintains she has done nothing wrong and did indeed refer herself to the No 10’s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus.

But one of the issues which won’t go away is that Tulip seems to have forgotten who bought her £800,000 gaff she was living in down Kings Cross.

Well, trifles like that can so easily slip the memory can’t they?

Oh, then she remembered – it had been gifted to her by Abdul Motalif, a Bangladeshi property developer with links to her aunt’s now politically hated and discredited Awami League.

Then there’s that picture of her, all smiles, with and her aunt Hasina. Now Vladimir we know is the personification of every human evil, but auntie Hasina is no slouch either. The Awami League – which was in power with her at the helm from 2008 until she was hounded out of the country last year, has been accused of every dictatorship trick in the book. Rigging elections, disappearing opponents, silencing a free press, using police and military to terrorise the civilian population… you know the drill.

Now, Tulip says she was only at the Kremlin with these despots to “visit her aunt”.

Awww, how lovely!

And yet why does that verse from Matthew 7:2 keep popping into my head “by your friends shall ye be judged”?

The good news for Kemi is that, if I was a gambling man, I’d say this one wasn’t anywhere near done and she’ll have many other chances to bring this up at PMQs.

But the bottom line is, and she needs to remember this, PMQs is not a 15 round Queensbury rules engagement, it’s a quick two-minute street fight and she needs to make her punches fast and accurate and get out the ring.

Figure out the main issue – the one we’ll be talking about in the pub tonight and just focus on that.

Of course Labour are also proposing to ban us all talking politics in the pub so I’d get the pints in while you still can…