Rachel Reeves’s “most notable absence” from her keynote speech has been revealed by Tom Clougherty, after addressing the Labour Party Conference.

Speaking to GB News, the Executive Director of the Institute for Economic Affairs claimed that the Chancellor “ducked the challenge” of addressing one key issue ahead of her Budget announcement in November.

Delivering her speech at the conference in Liverpool, Ms Reeves told the crowd: “The Conservatives and Reform, they want you to believe that our economy is broken, that our best days lie behind us, the decline is inevitable.

“I fundamentally reject that. It’s not the country I see around me, not the future that I believe in. I know that things are still difficult, bills are too high, getting ahead can feel tough, and there are still too many obstacles in the way for businesses.

“And so, our central economic objective is to change that. Growth to improve living standards is a challenge, and investment is a solution.”

Offering his analysis of the speech, Mr Clougherty told GB News: “I think the crucial point is actually she said a lot, but for me this speech was most notable for what she didn’t talk about. There was basically nothing about taxes in there at all.

“I think perhaps there was one line saying she’d like them to be as low as possible, but there were more mentions of breakfast clubs than there were of taxes from Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

He added: “I think that’s because we all know we have that OBR forecast coming, we have a Budget looming and we know there’s a big fiscal black hole.”

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Discussing Labour’s mission, Mr Clougherty said you need to “read between the lines” of her speech to see it.

He explained: “If you read between the lines in that speech, I suppose what you could say is she’s framing Labour’s mission as all about spending. It’s about investing, it’s about supporting public services.

“It’s not so much about the private sector, it’s certainly not about keeping the tax burden low. So if you want me to give an immediate take away from that speech, I’d say taxes are going up and probably quite significantly this autumn.”

Pointing to a challenge that the Chancellor missed in her speech, Mr Clougherty told GB News: “There may have been a possibility for her to make a different argument when she’s talking about fiscal responsibility and talking about borrowing costs.

“To say that a party of the left still has to be fiscally responsible, we can’t live beyond our means, we can’t just spend and spend and spend.

“I think she ducked that challenge. She made it about spending, she made it about investment, and that suggests to me that those manifesto promises on taxation are probably going to be broken in one form or another in the next couple of months.”

Delivering his verdict on Britain’s economy, Mr Clougherty said that growth “hasn’t happened” since the financial crisis.

He concluded: “Our biggest problem is the fact that the economy hasn’t grown, and of course you can stretch this further back if you want to, but more or less since the financial crisis, growth has been low in the UK and so living standards haven’t risen.

“And there hasn’t been the tax revenue supported by that private economy to pay for the kind of public services that probably a Labour Government would want. Now I think they’re right to put that front and centre and say we need faster growth and to say that the Conservatives failed to deliver that. But do they have a meaningful agenda for growth?

“It’s all very well to stand there and say Government’s going to be strategic, Government is going to invest, you can say we’re on the side of business, but I think most business people are going to say if the answer is Labour, we’re in serious trouble.”