Reeves veers into foghorn mode, voice of the neighbourhood watch

Like Sir Keir, her natural vocal setting is a dissatisfied whine

Presumably Hunt’s next trick is going to be speculating in tin mines and marrying off his cousin to a clergyman

As Rachel Reeves entered the chamber, the shadow front bench reverted to attack formation. The choreographed walk-on has become a fixture of their parliamentary manoeuvres. Keir Starmer rarely arrives at PMQS without a brace of female shadow Cabinet ministers – usually Reeves and Angela Rayner – on each arm. Charlie, flanked by two of his angels.

“We’ll allow the choreography to go,” scoffed the Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans as the old guard scurried off and new flunkies arrived. The least convincing heavies going; the muppets do Bugsy Malone.

Reeves came armed with complaints aplenty; chief among them, the scrapping of the £1million tax-free cap on pension savings announced in the Budget. She’d spent the morning touring TV studios – a sort of sponsored moanathon over the airwaves – lambasting this as a “gilded giveaway for the one per cent”.

They’d certainly changed their tune. In fact Labour at the moment has more tunes than a faulty jukebox. Last summer, Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, had categorically told The Daily Telegraph that Labour would abolish the “crazy” pensions cap for doctors if elected – despite its lessthan-progressive distributional effects. “I’m just being hard headed and pragmatic about this,” he insisted at the time. Yet here he sat, nodding his approval at each syllable; every inch the repentant sinner. Or, by his own metric, the lunatic.

Now, this was, said Reeves, “the wrong policy for the wrong people”.

Reeves is one of Labour’s more convincing performers; certainly an upgrade on the Leader of the Opposition. But, like Sir Keir, her natural vocal setting is a dissatisfied whine – occasionally veering into foghorn mode.

It is the voice of the neighbourhood watch; of the car-parking inspector – more suited to hectoring than upbeat commentary. Still, she tried. Reeves took a break from lambasting government policy to pay tribute to the brave companies managing to prosper, despite the Tories’ best efforts. “Great innovation right across Britain,” she trilled, exuding all the “sunlit uplands”.

Reeves compared the ever-changing Cabinet appointments to Trigger’s broom from Only Fools and Horses, “with its seven new heads, 14 new handles, only much less useful than that”. Jonathan Reynolds, shadow energy secretary, assuming “groom of the stool” position next to Reeves, chuckled and gurned his approval.

Answering Reeves was Mel Stride of the Department for Work and Pensions. A close ally of Rishi Sunak’s, he’d been rewarded for his devotion with a truly hellish brief. Imagine Captain Smith being paid back for all those loyal years at White Star Line with command of the Titanic.

How many doctors would be affected by the changes, foghorned Reeves. “Thousands upon thousands,” insisted Stride. Displaying something of Jeremy Hunt’s gift for boring his doubters into submission, he directed all naysayers to “page 9 of the distribution report”.

Chris Stephens of the SNP looked aghast at the idea of benefit sanctions. He is a man who is naturally given to sullenness, so dialling up the volume must have taken some effort in this regard. He compared the Government to “those wicked characters from the drama Poldark, the Warleggans”.

Presumably Hunt’s next trick is going to be speculating in tin mines and marrying off his cousin to a clergyman. All in all, it was hardly one of Parliament’s halcyon days; as Budget debates go this was less a case of rabbits out the hat, more the endless rattling of ghosts in the machine.