With her spring Budget statement, Rachel Reeves showed she is living in a parallel universe

There is always a divorced-from-reality aspect to Rachel Reeves. Her speeches and smiling public appearances give her a sense of existing in a parallel universe. Let’s not dwell on the never-explained tears.

To that end, there is the universe where the rest of Britain lives, with shuttered shops and pubs and a million young people not in work or training and a housing crisis, to name just a few horrors that have worsened on Reeves’s watch. And then there is where she lives, a place with upbeat talk of growth and accomplishment.

Yet even by her standards, the chancellor conveyed the impression of being in her own world with Tuesday’s spring statement, one in which there was not a raging war in the Middle East. In her own inimitable, robotic fashion it was brusque business-as-usual, regardless of what was unfolding elsewhere.

To be fair a tad, but only a tad, this was a set-piece, not predicated on the US-Israel attack on Iran. It was prepared well in advance of the first missile striking. All it did was lend the occasion a greater unreal quality. Eyes were glancing at mobiles with the latest news. Doubtless the ears would have been otherwise occupied too, if the speaker allowed AirPods.

We were told it would be “boring”, just in case anyone thought it could be anything else. It would be short, and it was that as well.

“Inflation is down, borrowing is down, living standards are up,” Reeves barked. She is “proud” to be the chancellor, “delivering the biggest uplift in defence spending since the Cold War”. She is “in no doubt” that Britain has the ability to “navigate” the challenges we face. “The plan that I have been driving forward since the election is the right one: stability in our public finances, investment in our infrastructure and reform to Britain’s economy.”

It required a double-check if there was anyone still in the chamber. Increasingly, Reeves gave the impression of spewing her patter like a salesperson with her foot wedged in the front door, greatly enthused by her own product and becoming ever more shrill and beseeching, even as one by one the audience tried to shuffle away. No one was buying what she was selling.

The speaker did intervene to tell MPs they didn’t need to remain if they were not interested. Seriously, he did. He was telling them to behave but he might as well have been showing them some mercy and pointing to the fire exit.

There was some acknowledgement of what was on everyone else’s mind. Her plan for the economy is “even more important in a world… that has become more uncertain”, she said. The government will “chart a course through uncertainty” and “secure the economy through shocks”.

How, when Britain is entirely dependent on oil imported from Norway, and gas from Qatar and the US, and when the price of oil and gas is climbing? If she had a blueprint, desired a legacy, that’s what it should be – to make Britain self-sufficient in energy because Ukraine and now Iran have shown how vulnerable we are.

But even if she wanted that, who would trust her execution? One great frustration with Reeves and with Keir Starmer is that they talk constantly of this plan, that plan, this review, that review and nothing concrete and meaningful ever transpires. They are very good at pointing to small improvements or investments here and there, and their supporters talk them up. But nothing genuinely major anytime soon.

Reeves also requires a decent speechwriter, one who will persuade her to forego self-justification. Must you name-check the Mais lecture so? Note to those who aren’t economics anoraks: “the Mais” is an annual speech given to a City banking and finance audience by the prime minister, chancellor, Bank of England governor, leading politicians and the like. It’s a big deal to them, if nobody else.

Clearly, it matters to Reeves. “In my second Mais lecture in two weeks’ time, I will set out three major choices that will determine the course of our economy into the future…” Note that “second”. That’s telling the snobs.

What are the choices, though? “To go further in strengthening our global relationships”, “to go further in backing innovation and harnessing the power of AI”, and “to go further in transforming our economic geography”. Well, knock me down with a rolled-up Order Paper. It’s your job; you should be doing these things anyway, or at least we would hope so. No wonder her opposite number, the shadow chancellor Mel Stride, was exasperated. “Is that it?” he opened with, before suggesting she was living on “another planet”. Well, quite. It was not a spring statement, he said, but a surrender.

Coming up to two years in power and Reeves is still blaming the previous lot. Last week, the voters of Gorton and Denton showed who they thought was responsible for the misery inflicted upon their constituency by pushing Labour, in a hitherto cast-iron Labour seat, into third place. Likewise, she takes every opportunity to lambast Reform for its lack of economic policies when Labour is sitting on a substantial majority and should be using that dominance to forge ahead and make good on the promises it made.

With an ever-ascending flourish at the end that our political leaders today regard as de rigueur, she sat down. Everyone could hurry out to discover what was actually occurring in that other world.