Others believe Labour has failed to ride the wave of optimism that swept them into power. The Government’s dour demeanour has been noticed across the pond.
“If you’re the prime minister of a country I think your job is to exude as much optimism as possible,” says one official based in Washington.
“Now, you can have an argument about whether Boris [Johnson] took the right approach to governing overall, but every time [Sir Keir] opens his mouth he just looks like an undertaker.”
There are those with deep pockets who are willing to give Reeves and the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt.
Mike Eakins, chief investment officer at Phoenix, Britain’s biggest retirement savings business, welcomed the Chancellor’s decision to unlock up to £50bn by rewriting Britain’s debt rules to take into account the benefits of investment as well as the cost.
The owner of Standard Life is already a big investor in UK infrastructure, including social housing. Eakins says the FTSE 100 company is willing to use billions more of its savers’ cash to invest in Britain if presented with the right backdrop.
“If [the borrowing] is delivered in the right way, and with discipline, then we think the market will buy into it,” he says. “And we will certainly support it.”
Jeremy Hunt warned on Thursday that a fresh borrowing spree risked spooking already nervous bond traders. After all, Reeves is likely to have to increase the amount of gilts the UK issues this year to up to £300bn. “Markets are watching,” said the former (now shadow) chancellor.
Reeves herself is doing her best to calm any concerns.
“I will be a responsible chancellor,” Reeves told reporters as she pledged not to go on a borrowing binge and keep some of her new fiscal war chest in reserve.
Investors here remain wary of former prime minister Liz Truss, whose £45bn package of unfunded tax cuts spooked markets and triggered a surge in borrowing costs.
For someone who was in office for fewer than 50 days and is no longer an MP, her name has been mentioned several times this week, including by Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), as an example of how not to do things.
After all, the UK’s debt pile is now almost equal to the size of the economy, with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the Government’s tax and spending watchdog, projecting in March that the UK will be spending more than £100bn per year on debt interest alone by the end of the decade.