Rachel Reeves was a picture of melancholy from the moment she entered the chamber for PMQs. She was almost the last cabinet minister to arrive – it looked briefly as if there would be no room for her. Already her eyes were poached-eggish. ‘Hay fever?’ I wrote in my notebook.
As the 37-minute session unfolded it became increasingly obvious that the affliction was something more serious than a high pollen count. We were subjected to the sight – the extraordinary, troubling, upsetting sight – of a Chancellor in open tears. Her face was gaunt. She wiped her eyes. Her lower lip crumbled. She rubbed the tip of her nose with a sleeve and at one point cast her gaze up at the press gallery with its craning, inquisitive scribes. Hers was a look of harrowed anguish.
‘A personal matter,’ said the Treasury some 15 minutes after the end of PMQs. Journalists hesitated at this. Even the most senior ministers of the Crown must, naturally, be permitted due privacy. Yet this was also a parliamentary event. Here was a Chancellor of the Exchequer in evident, sustained distress while sitting in full view of the nation and, crucially, the markets. Sir Keir Starmer was being asked legitimate questions about the nation’s stretched finances. He was also quizzed about the career prospects of that same Chancellor who was sitting beside him. And she was weeping.
The tears started to flow while Kemi Badenoch tore into Sir Keir about the government’s troubles on Tuesday, when welfare reforms collapsed at a cost of some £5 billion to the Treasury. Those reforms were scrapped, it was said, while Ms Reeves was out of the capital.
Mrs Badenoch, on jaunty form, noticed how forlorn the Chancellor was looking. ‘She’s pointing at me,’ said Kemi, ‘but she looks absolutely miserable. Labour MPs are going on the record, saying the Chancellor is toast. The reality is she’s a human shield for his incompetence.’
This was not much more than the usual Wednesday argy-bargy. Such rough things are occasionally uttered at PMQs and they do not usually provoke waterworks.
Ms Reeves continued to point and to mouth disagreement with Mrs Badenoch while the Conservative leader invited the PM to repeat his past, rash declaration that Ms Reeves will remain in post for the entire parliament. ‘Will she really?’ asked a sceptical Badenoch.
‘Well she certainly won’t!’ retorted Sir Keir, referring to Kemi’s own chances of survival. Sir Keir continued with some further routine jabs at his opponent. Beside him Ms Reeves pulled her lips into a tight bow and did much blinking. She looked worse than ‘miserable’. She looked rinsed by dejection. One shoulder was partly turned on the gawping galleries. She sat at a sunken angle. Two of her fingers tapped a fast rhythm on one knee.
Sir Keir contrived not to repeat his promise that his Chancellor was unsackable. Mrs Badenoch: ‘How awful for the Chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she will stay in place.’ This was when the tears accelerated.
Her left eye twitched. She wiped the right one. She nodded, perhaps hoping to look resilient. A few times she swung her beautifully kept hair, as if trying to shake herself out of these doldrums. Sir Keir did not make any acknowledgement of her sadness. On her other side she had that chill presence, Bridget Phillipson. Nor was any obvious sympathy flowing her way from Angela Rayner. The one person to be kind to her was a ministerial aide, Matt Rodda, who gave her a tube of Extra Strong Mints.
A group of Labour women behind the Speaker’s Chair watched her with concern. Ellie Reeves, minister without portfolio, was several places down the front bench. She cast the occasional glance at her older sister. When the session finally ended – what torment it had been – it was Ellie who put an arm round her and clutched her right hand. They departed together, the Chancellor leaving that furnace as fast as she could.
