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Rachel Reeves has finally broken with the Treasury’s so-called “Green Book” — the technical manual that decides whether public investment delivers value for money — but not to lift children out of poverty, end food insecurity, or rebuild our hollowed-out welfare state.

Instead, she’s funnelling £15.6 billion into transport projects that won’t start rolling out until 2027, and that, far from addressing the desperate needs of families struggling to eat, will mostly serve to enrich private contractors, property developers, and well-connected consultants.

The Treasury’s Green Book has long been criticised — rightly — for skewing investment toward London and the South East, where higher population density and wages produce faster financial “returns” on government projects.

That bias has meant places like Greater Manchester, the North East, and West Yorkshire have languished with outdated transport networks and underfunded infrastructure for decades.

Reeves says she’s rewriting the rules to fix that imbalance.

But in practice, her version of rebalancing the economy looks suspiciously like Thatcherite trickle-down economics, just applied further north.

Same game, new postcode

Under Reeves’ plan,more than £15 billion will be spent on tram lines, metro extensions, and new bus stations.

Some of these ideas were reheated from Rishi Sunak’s Network North plans, that were cobbled together after HS2 was scrapped north of Birmingham. So they’re not even original.

There’s no question that these regions need investment.

But what’s being sold as a bold step toward fairness is, in truth, a massive long-term subsidy for the construction industry, all while Reeves clings to rigid fiscal rules and refuses to spend on people who need help today.

What good is a tram to Stockport in 2030 when families there are skipping meals tonight?

Children can’t eat tramlines

This is the key betrayal: Reeves has chosen commercial enrichment over human need.

While Labour MPs urge her to undo Tory-era benefit cuts and confront the growing crisis in disability support, Reeves is sticking to austerity-lite.

The poor must wait — again — while billions are earmarked for future infrastructure that may or may not materialise.

And let’s be clear: this investment is not even targeted at the poorest.

It’s focused on “metro mayor” areas — the regions where Labour wants to fend off challenges from Reform UK.

This is less economic strategy and more electoral calculus.

Who profits?

Reeves’ investment will certainly benefit some — but they won’t be the ones queuing at food banks. They’ll be:

• Private construction firms, with lucrative government contracts

• Landowners and developers, who will see property prices soar near new lines

• Consultants and corporate lobbyists, paid to navigate the new investment landscape

In other words: the same people who always profit.

Unless these transport schemes are publicly owned, fare-capped, and tied to a programme of local job creation and affordable housing, they will do little to close the gaping inequality that has defined Britain since 2010.

The illusion of action

Labour supporters may feel a glimmer of hope seeing Reeves break with Treasury orthodoxy.

But this is not the bold economic transformation many expected from a post-Tory government.

It’s not a Green New Deal.

It’s not redistribution.

It’s state-funded enrichment for the already comfortable, in the hope that their wealth will somehow trickle down to those left behind.

It won’t. Trickle-down economics is a “piss-take” – as Reeves’s own prime minister, Keir Starmer, once said himself.

If she can tear up the Green Book to lay tramlines, she can tear it up to feed hungry children.

She can rewrite it to fund universal free school meals.

She can rip it up for social housing, disability rights, and rebuilding the NHS.

She just chooses not to.

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