Sketch: Ruthless Rachel Reeves trials a new slogan

The first thing Rachel Reeves did when she entered Number 11 was ordering civil servants to tear the place apart, looking for some kind of incriminating memo.

“It’ll say something like, ‘I’m afraid there’s no money’,” she told her new underlings, recalling that infamous note left by Labour’s last chief secretary to the Treasury. Unfortunately no such letter was found – not even so much as a damning Post It note.

So instead, the new chancellor got to work on shaping her new slogan: “If we cannot afford it, we cannot do it.”

Disappointed as she was that no scribbled note was left by her Tory predecessor, she still felt able to blame them for pretty much everything currently wrong with the country. Which, really, is not completely unfair.

But she went on to say the Conservatives had “covered up” the true state of the public finances. And she was not publishing a document highlighting the “real spending situation” she had inherited, pointing to a £22bn overspend this year alone. Commitments on the asylum system were “unfunded and undisclosed”. Improvements to rail were “unfunded and undisclosed”. Money for Ukraine’s war against Russia had not been set aside (though this, she insisted, would be honoured in full).

“Where they presided over recklessness, I will bring responsibility. I will take immediate action,” she said. And then she proceeded to repeat her new mantra while confirming a bunch of stuff which will no longer happen.

The Tory frontbench was up in arms as Reeves confirmed rail projects would be scrapped, winter fuel payments dropped, and new qualification plans will be left of the shelf. The Commons mic picked up Prime Minister Keir Starmer calmly telling to the Tories: “It’s your mess.”

The Conservatives said the cuts were “outrageous!” And the Labour frontbench agreed, but insisted they take no blame for their decisions.

“If we cannot afford it, we cannot do it,” Reeves added, equally calmly. It makes you wonder what the Labour government will fund… but there’s only three months of waiting to find out, with Reeves to announce her first budget on 30 October. Though she warned more “difficult decisions” are on their way, across “spending, welfare and tax”.

Once again, the Tories jeered, especially at the latter. They knew it, they cried, Labour is planning tax hikes. They were almost gleeful.

Except for Jeremy Hunt, whose face was like thunder as he got to his feet to respond. “Today, she will fool absolutely no one with a shameless attempt to lay the ground for tax rises she didn’t have the courage to tell the electorate about,” he said.

He hinted the chancellor had been dishonest, given she had had access to the Treasury’s permanent secretary for months. Indeed, this is just a speech to justify taxes “she’s been planning all along”, he said. Labour loves taxes, Hunt said.

Going on to defend his own record, he said the country was “far from being broke and broken”. Try telling that to families under pressure and a creaking National Health Service, Jezza. But he continued regardless, pointing out figures that list the Labour of 2010 in a bad light. His party then faced difficult decisions, but at least they had been honest about cuts, he argued. And his party had that infamous note as proof of how bad things were under Gordon Brown.

Reeves was having none of it. She told her counterpart that today he had a chance to “admit what we had done” but instead he had chosen not to take responsibility. “The word the country was looking for today was sorry,” she said.

“Rubbish!” Hunt replied. Which is funny because that’s exactly what voters think of him.