Reeves hasn't supplied the material to build up Britain

Potholes and schools have their place, says Chris Blackhurst. But where were the big ideas to shake off our national gloom?

- Chris Blackhurst

Looking back, it's hard to choose: the name-checking of a primary school in Hartlepool, or the potholes. There were other moments, but those two stood out. In her first Budget Labour's first for 14 years, and the first to be delivered by a woman chancellor Rachel Reeves said the school in the northeast of England would be rebuilt, and that an extra £500m would be spent on repairing roads.

Sadly and tellingly, both announcements were greeted with cheers from those sitting behind her. If anything summed up the short-termism and lack of vision bedevilling our national politics, it was this. In the country that once possessed pioneers and geniuses such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson, what was meant to be a sales pitch for the British economy – billed, repeatedly, in the run-up as “historic” – was reduced to trivialities.

Of course, the school repair and gaps in the tarmac have their place. But in a speech of this magnitude, with the rest of the world watching – really? It felt like a Goldilocks budget, of taking just a bit from here, just a bit from there. What it added up to, the sum total, was not much at all. Not in terms of getting the nation moving, and not where future growth is concerned. We were treated to a series of patch-ups, aimed at addressing the failings of the party opposite.

Fair enough, we understood they’d not done much in their 14 years in charge. But anyone seeking the bigger picture – how Reeves was going to ensure that Britain was better placed internationally, so that investors would be queueing up to come here – will have been disappointed. At times, her address seemed like a weekly round-up of back-office maintenance jobs rather than someone setting out the stall for a country’s long-term prosperity.