Labour MPs saw a different side to Rachel Reeves on Wednesday evening.

Fresh from delivering her spending review, the chancellor faced a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, telling them to go out and “sell” what she had just announced to voters.

“People are only going to know the good news that we set out today if we campaign on it, if we deliver the leaflets, if we speak to people on the doorstep, if we write those pieces for our local papers, that is how people are going to know that it is Labour making these differences,” Reeves told them.

So far, so unsurprising. But those present detected a marked change of tone from the chancellor, who has often appeared to have the weight of the world on her shoulders over the past 11 months.

“She joked, she laughed and she looked well,” said the MP. “She was like a woman released.”

When the winter fuel debacle was raised, Reeves acknowledged that mistakes had been made since Labour won the election.

“That shows she gets it,” one backbench MP told HuffPost UK. “She knows where she is in the popularity stakes and there’s no way you don’t feel that personally. She’s not Cruella de Vil. But this felt like a reset moment for her.”

Among the jokes, however, there was a nod to the often-fractious negotiations with her Cabinet colleagues as their departmental budgets were set.

The last hold-out was home secretary Yvette Cooper, whose refusal to accept the real-terms cuts she was facing eventually led to Reeves taking the highly unusual step of imposing a settlement on her.

At the PLP meeting, Reeves admitted to being “peed off” with police chiefs complaining about a lack of cash after receiving a 2.3% increase in their budget.

“I don’t think they would have said that without Yvette giving them the nod,” one MP said.

For the moment, however, Labour MPs from across the party’s various factions seem pretty pleased with what Reeves announced.

Chris Curtis, co-chair of the Labour Growth Group, said: “We were pushing for greater investment in affordable housing, infrastructure, and research and development and we’ve seen major commitments on all three.

“These are the foundations of sustainable economic growth, and with them we can start to deliver what the British people rightly expect: rising wages, economic security, and properly funded public services.”

Jo White, the MP for Bassetlaw and chair of the Labour Red Wall Group, said the spending review – which included billions for better transport links in the north and Midlands – had been “the starting gun” on the next election.

“We welcome that the government is listening to the Red Wall,” she said.

Reeves might find her spending spree is a tougher sell across the country, however.

A focus group carried out in Coventry after the spending review by the More in Common think-tank offered further proof of the widespread disillusionment there is in the country with politicians.

All of those taking part had voted Labour last year, but been unimpressed so far by the party’s time in office.

“Growing up when you voted for Labour, you knew what you were voting for,” said Deena. “I think at the moment, they’ve just gone back to blaming things on the Tories and not giving stuff they promised.”

On what Reeves had announced, therapy assistant Caroline said: “She just says what she thinks we want to hear. And we do want to hear it. But will we see it? I definitely won’t hold my breath.”

Ed Hodgson, More in Common’s associate director of polling and analysis, said: “Behind all the numbers from the spending review, it’s clear from the voters we spoke to in Coventry that they’re running out of patience and want to see real improvements in their day-to-day lives.

“That’s going to be the real test of whether the chancellor’s financial calculations, and her belief in UK growth giving her future headroom, can actually pay off politically.”

The ink on Reeves’ spending review speech had barely dried before the Office for National Statistics announced on Thursday morning that the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) shrunk by 0.3% in April.

For a government’s whose number one mission is supposedly growing the economy, this was sub-optimal.

A senior No.10 aide was sanguine telling HuffPost UK that they had been braced for bad news.

“You can overdo the month-to-month stuff,” he said. “The month before growth was up 0.7%.

“But we’ve never shied away from the fact that there’s a lot to do on GDP and we always knew that April was going to be tricky.”

Critics have dubbed Reeves the “Klarna chancellor”, insisting that the billions of pounds of spending she announced on Wednesday will have to be paid for later, most likely by hiking taxes in the Budget.

Reeves, who put up taxes by £40 billion in what was meant to be a once-in-a-parliament move last autumn, has refused to rule out coming back for more this autumn, while also insisting that the spending review was “fully funded”.

“We didn’t put up taxes in the autumn for no reason, we had to do it, and the choices we had was either to put up VAT on everyone or ask businesses to pay a bit more,” said one senior government figure.

“We don’t relish tax rises, but we need to put the public finances first.”

But one Labour insider accused the chancellor of “boxing herself in” by sticking to her fiscal rules, which forbid any borrowing to pay for day-to-day government spending.

“It’s their starting position on everything,” the source said. “You can argue that’s the best possible starting point, but equally you can say at some point, shouldn’t your starting point be how do we win that election or deliver the plan for change?”

With all the talk of more tax rises, one seasoned observer suggested that Reeves may in fact have something much more radical in mind.

“The big unknown, and which will only begin to take shape in 2027, is will this hairshirt being worn now give Rachel a war chest that will allow her to do a big tax cut before the next election?” they said.

“Mind you the recent track record or pre-election tax cuts is not great, given Jeremy Hunt did three of them and the Tories still got hammered.”

If Labour are to avoid the same fate in 2029, Reeves needs to hope that the spending spree she announced on Wednesday delivers tangible improvements to the lives of ordinary voters – and soon.