Yesterday, as the aftershocks of the Labour fight over its welfare reforms continued to reverberate at Prime Minister’s Questions, Rachel Reeves was seen to cry while seated just behind Starmer in the House of Commons.
Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch wasted no time in pointing out that the Chancellor looked “absolutely miserable” and had been used as Starmer’s “human shield”. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, struck a much more empathetic tone later, saying: “Seeing another person in distress is always very difficult, and we are wishing her well.”
Labour has said that Reeves was dealing with a “personal matter”; other reports suggested a disagreement with Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle played a part too. Whatever the cause of the tears, they do rather sum up the position Reeves and Labour find themselves in a year after winning the election.
But can Rachel Reeves come back from this and regain her authority?
Kitty Donaldson: ‘The markets have given Reeves an ace to play’
Ironically, Rachel Reeves emerges from her Commons embarrassment stronger than before.
On Tuesday, the bond markets made it clear, by their freak-out over a rumour she could be replaced, that they view her as the defence against spendthrifts among her Labour colleagues.
That strengthens her hand to tell backbenchers that money can only be spent once, key messaging as they plot a rebellion to demand changes to farmers’ inheritance tax and the two-child benefit cap.
On Thursday, when asked if there would be tax rises in the Budget, Reeves told reporters that “of course there is a cost” to the welfare changes voted for in Parliament. This is an argument you’ll be hearing a lot in the next few months.
Reeves’s tears have also forced Labour backbenchers to reflect on how they have treated her; to regret the endless briefing that she was to blame for the welfare bill shambles by imposing spending cuts. The mistakes surrounding that doomed bill had many midwives.
That aside, the scenes in the House of Commons on Wednesday have forced Starmer to guarantee Reeves will remain as Chancellor longer than any premier would like to, denying himself the flexibility to shift her in the future.
“She is an excellent chancellor, she will be chancellor for a very long time to come into the next election and beyond,” Starmer told Virgin Radio on Thursday morning. With that he guaranteed she’ll be around as long as he himself remains in post.
How long that is, of course, is a separate question entirely.
Kitty Donaldson is The i Paper’s Chief Political Commentator
A year on from a stonking landslide victory that ended 14 wilderness years for Labour, everyone is a flipping expert as to how Reeves and Starmer cocked it up before they began.
Oh, the benefit of hindsight and LBC phone-ins. The only thing that matters now is foresight.
So what would Taylor (let’s not mention the free tickets again) Swift do? “It’s okay to cry a river, just remember to build a bridge and get over it,” is her line.
How does Reeves build that bridge? Recently she said: “Contrary to some conventional wisdom, I didn’t come into politics because I care passionately about fiscal rules.”
So show it. She must show the country what she does care about and how she’ll use the public purse to achieve it. Reform must not be dodged where reform is needed. She must stop being a handmaiden to rules and rebels. And strain every sinew to address the grinding inequality that lies behind so many of our social problems.
Alison Phillips is a columnist for The i Paper and former editor of the Daily Mirror
Read Next
square THE I PAPER TEAMRead MoreSimon Kelner: ‘That tear may be what shows us her moral strength’
Henry Maudsley, the early 20th century psychiatrist who founded the pioneering London hospital that takes his name, said that “sorrows which find no vent in tears, may soon make other organs weep”.
Today, we have Piers Morgan telling Rachel Reeves to get a grip. “If you can’t stand the heat, Rachel, get out of the political kitchen,” he tweeted in the blunt argot of the day.
We have come a long way from the elegance of Maudsley’s time, but what Morgan ignores is the fact that Ms Reeves’s tears in the House of Commons bear garden this week might not have been an indication of professional fallibility or political inadequacy, but merely an expression of a private agony that was exacerbated by frustration and anger. To bowdlerise Maudsley, better out than in.
We may never know what it was that so deeply upset Ms Reeves, but our see-all, know-all, tell-all culture doesn’t leave any space for the nuanced reading of human emotion.
Rachel Reeves will forever be remembered for blubbing in the House in the wake of a humiliating policy climbdown, the image of that single tear running down her cheek burned into our consciousness.
Given that we look to our Chancellor for coolness under pressure, it’s a hell of a long way back for her from there. But what if it turns out that the source of her upset is of a dimension that it elicits genuine sympathy across the political divide and beyond?
Her political authority may be based on a clear-eyed, actuarial sensibility, but her courage in keeping going under such circumstances may, in the end, show her as a person of moral strength and personal fortitude.
Simon Kelner is a columnist for The i Paper and was editor from 2010 to 2011
Kate Maltby: Reeves is now irreversibly wounded
It is a biological reality that women tend to cry more easily than men. A 2023 scientific paper suggests women evolved this habit to reduce aggression in men who were close enough to smell the tears; every modern woman in the workplace, however, knows that the impact of women’s tears on men is confusion, embarrassment, and an irretrievable loss of respect. (This is why we do our crying in the lavatories.) Cry in a public setting while female, and it is a certainty that somewhere, a bloke will mutter about women’s hormones.
Other MPs have cried in the Commons, male and female, including the disabled MP Dr Marie Tidball, who broke down just two days ago in frustration over cuts to PIP. But Tidball was a backbench rebel expressing a feeling of powerlessness in the face of Cabinet austerity; Reeves is a Chancellor trying to lead. Tears look appropriate when a woman is pleading and powerless. (There is an entire artistic history of this built around the political process of women’s “intercession” to powerful men.) They look weak when she is supposed to be setting the agenda.
In a just world, Rachel Reeves will pull herself together and get on with her job. The gilt markets this morning have shown confidence in her and Keir Starmer made a show of his support, presumably having realised just how progressive history would view a Labour leader who appointed the first female Chancellor and then knifed her when she cried. In the real world, she seems irreversibly wounded.
Kate Maltby is a columnist for The i Paper
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( ‘Ironically, Reeves is now stronger’: The i Paper experts’ verdict on the Chancellor’s future )
Also on site :
- Will Kroger Be Open on Fourth of July 2025?
- 4 semis catch fire, causing explosions at Weld County truck stop
- Wayfair Is Selling a 'Solid' $1,076 Adirondack Chair Set for Just $470, and Shoppers Say They 'Love These Chairs'