Rachel Reeves has been left red-faced after parts of her book bore similarities to chunks of Wikipedia [Chris McAndrew_CC BY 3.0 Deed]

IF you buy shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’ new book, you are either a sycophant – we saw a few of those clapping till their hands were red raw during conference season – or a mug.

After all, why on earth would you spend £17.99 for something we now know, thanks to some sleuthing by the Financial Times, includes chunks which look almost identical to passages from Wikipedia and elsewhere. To make matters worse, there are no references acknowledging where it has been pasted from.

She insists this isn’t plagiarism, although edits are planned for future print runs of The Women Who Made Modern Economics.

Harrington wonders whether the “little mistake” explanation would have been accepted if it was a Conservative politician with such a slapdash approach to making easy cash through books. Perhaps they shouldn’t be printing any more. If she can’t sit down and think about how to construct whatever she wants to write in her own words, why are people expected to pay the best part of £20 to read them?

Better still, she could donate any future sales to hardship charities supporting families with more than two children. Ms Reeves after all does not want the benefit cap lifted to help them that way.

The Labour front bench keeps insisting that the grown-ups are running the party again but maybe the best thing would be to simply to stick to that simple job of formulating fair and decent policies, and winning the next election.

Surely this isn’t the time for a book tour?