This is John Batcher, a conversation with my colleague Joseph Sternberg,

member of the World Street Journal. He's in London.

He writes political economics.

Puzzling about the new labor government and what it is that is their vision and where are they going.

And Joe introduces me to a British saying, Jam Tomorrow, which doesn't make any sense until you realize they're talking about

jam, as in strawberry jam, as in grape jam, jam tomorrow, promising.

And yet, labor doesn't look to be promising anything but no jam tomorrow.

Here's Joe to explain this very Britishism and at the same time, Labor's Challenge.

More of this later tonight.

Well, I think that, you know, Britain has this

notion which may be left over from rationing in the war that things might be dire right now

but we will have jam tomorrow you know we'll be able to get the good sweet stuff later.

Labor's pitch right now seems to be jam never. They're doing this oddly sour pessimistic talking about, you know, talking down the

economy and talking up how miserable people are going to be as a result of all of the

taxes and the spending cuts and the belt tightening and the rest of it.

And as you point out, Rachel Reeves is at the forefront of this because she is the

Chancellor of the Exchequer is the one who is in charge of the money in the new labor government.

She's the equivalent of the Treasury Secretary.

And I think that, you know, what's going on here

is that they campaigned basically on the idea that labor would be a safe pair of hands that voters could trust with the economy and with the public finances.

And so she is absolutely determined to not do anything that's going to scare anyone, including not scaring investors.

And that's limiting her scope for action.

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