Construction leaders have been quick to welcome Rachel Reeves’ speech this week setting out how infrastructure is central to her plans to “kick-start economic growth”. The chancellor even gave a name check to a few companies in the sector who were invited to the event held in Oxford, signalling that she has been in talks with the likes of Mace, Skanska and Arup over how to speed up infrastructure delivery.

Katy Dowding, Skanska UK president and CEO, who had been in the audience, said afterwards: “There was definitely a sense of optimism in the room, and my message to government is clear: be bold, be brave and let’s build.”

Reactions elsewhere have been similar, though we are not seeing the level of excitement that you might expect when a chancellor pledges to “go further and faster” in order to build our way to prosperity.

Perhaps it is a style thing. Reeves doesn’t really do soaring rhetoric in the way that Boris Johnson did. More likely, though, it is down to past experience: successive governments have promised major infrastructure and failed to deliver…