The Readout

Julian Harris: Starmer Faces Business Chiefs as Tax Rise Bites

Keir Starmer at the British Chambers of Commerce global annual conference in London today

Photographer: Betty Laura Zapata/Bloomberg
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The British Chambers of Commerce told us a few weeks ago that a “senior cabinet minister” would be addressing its annual conference, leading me to assume this was code for Rachel Reeves.

Instead, it was the Prime Minister himself who rocked up at the QEII Centre in Westminster this morning to face a crowd of not-entirely-impressed business leaders. Reeves, meanwhile, made sure she was 130 miles away in Tutbury, which Google Maps tells me is a place in Staffordshire.