Labour’s biggest opponent is no longer the Conservative Party. It is the bond market: a 150-pound XL Bully that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt currently keeps on a lead. It ripped apart the Truss government in 49 days. It is the underlying reason why Keir Starmer abandoned his £28bn green pledge last week.
What Labour seems to miss is the fact that finance is as much a piece of theatre as politics. On the surface, bond prices might seem rational, driven by hard-headed decisions about inflation, interest rates and credit risk. Underneath, however, they represent the same seething mass of human hopes and fears in search of a story that we see in politics.
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