It was painful to watch Rachel Reeves on Laura Kuenssberg’s show on Sunday morning.
The Chancellor was a blinking, stuttering mess as she attempted to explain just why she’d accepted freebie tickets in a corporate box to a Sabrina Carpenter concert.
Even I was squirming by the end of the interview – on her behalf.
Ms Reeves has form, of course. Along with Sir Keir Starmer, she’d already apologised for taking thousands of pounds worth of free clothing when she arrived at No 11 Downing Street last year. Yet here we are again.
The Chancellor claims she couldn’t pay for the concert because, mysteriously, the tickets ‘had no price’. By which, I presume, she means that her seats weren’t on offer to the general public.
Yet this is no ‘excuse’ at all. It is utter nonsense and whoever advised her to offer that explanation deserves to be shot.
It’s not the only bad advice dispensed to Ms Reeves in recent months.
In fact, I believe the Chancellor has been a serial victim of poor guidance from the bungling special advisers infesting Downing Street.
The Chancellor has spent too long in opposition, too long as a ‘Yes’ woman, too long in Starmer’s thrall, writes Nadine Dorries
She was a blinking, stuttering mess as she attempted to explain just why she’d accepted freebie tickets in a corporate box to a Sabrina Carpenter concert, writes Nadine Dorries
Watching her on Sunday, I saw not just a flustered politician, but a woman with sheer panic in her eyes. As she ummed and ahhed and cleared her throat, the penny seemed to be dropping that she might not have much longer in the job – or many more freebies to defend before the Prime Minister has a change of heart and denounces her. Which, I’m sorry to say, is all too likely.
The first female Chancellor was always going to attract scrutiny. But there is no special pleading that can disguise two austerity budgets within six months (believe me, tomorrow’s Spring Statement will amount to a budget).
Reeves has killed growth stone dead with sheer pessimism, including imaginary financial black holes that even the Office for Budget Responsibility can’t find. She has heaped devastation upon businesses and charities with her ill-judged increase in National Insurance – a tax on jobs.
The Chancellor has already punished pensioners and farmers, no doubt at the insistence of her advisers. And tomorrow, we will see disabled citizens and civil servants lined up against the wall.
Reeves has driven wealth-creating, taxpaying, multi-millionaires from our shores at the rate of one every 45 minutes and kept inflation at a damaging three per cent – even as she presides over a rise in unemployment while plunging both the entertainment and night-time economies into crisis.
I would say her departure is likely any time soon. Yet – as I have written in this column – I once had high hopes for Rachel Reeves.
If we had to have a Starmer government, I felt that she would be the person best placed to nurture the future of our fragile economy in this deeply unstable climate. To me, she seemed calm, sensible and collegiate. She doesn’t tend to posture or lash out. I like her way of doing business.
What I hadn’t accounted for, though, was the startling lack of independence that Reeves would display in her new role.
Many previous Chancellors have behaved as though they had complete autonomy from No 10. Who can forget the legendary – and entirely unhelpful – animosity between Tony Blair as Prime Minister and Gordon Brown?
The very opposite has applied to Rachel Reeves, who appears at times to be no more than a bag carrier for the real architect of her disastrous policies, Starmer.
Surely it’s the Prime Minister and his unelected aides who have their hands on the levers of power within the Treasury. Yet it’s the hapless Reeves who will no doubt take the rap for their poor decision-making – amid the all-too-predictable briefings that she was incompetent.
It’s not so hard to see how all this came about. After long years in opposition, Reeves was appointed to the role of Shadow Chancellor by Starmer himself.
She clearly feels a strong sense of loyalty – perhaps even deference – towards Starmer, who gave her the remarkable opportunity and privilege to become the first ever female Chancellor.
Maybe she thought she and Starmer would be more like David Cameron and George Osborne, predecessors who really did work as a team.
But Starmer is not Cameron and Reeves is no Osborne.
Sadly, she has failed us – and that’s because Reeves has been unable to move away from the party politics of envy to the non-political role of securing the country’s financial wellbeing.
The Chancellor has spent too long in opposition, too long as a ‘Yes’ woman, too long in Starmer’s thrall.
Lacking self-belief and confidence, she simply doesn’t have what it takes to stand up to the Prime Minister.
Being grateful for the job simply doesn’t cut it – and one day soon she will pay a heavy price.
Go woke with Nokes
Deputy speaker and Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, nicknamed Caroline Wokes due to her view on trans rights, could take over as Speaker of the House from Sir Lindsay Hoyle
Allies of the Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, believe that a cabal of woke Left-wing Labour MPs want to remove him from the post. He could be right.
But the idea that he could be replaced by the wokest of all MPs, the Conservative Deputy Speaker, Caroline Nokes – nicknamed Caroline Wokes owing to her view on trans rights – is revealing. If she did get the nod, it would explain a great deal about today’s Conservative Party and why, sadly, we are where we are.
Why YOU must view Adolescence
People in Liverpool love their own – and they’re particularly fond of Scouse actor and producer Stephen Graham.
So, it came as no surprise to me that Scouse pride in Stephen’s four-part Netflix series, Adolescence, co-written with Jack Thorne, is off the scale. It didn’t matter who I spoke to back home – every conversation seemed to start with the question: ‘Have you watched Adolescence?’
I have done now – and I’m hugely impressed. I must admit that I wasn’t expecting to learn much from the series, despite the huge impact I know it’s had on many other viewers.
Having served both as a health minister and culture secretary, I already knew about the impact of social media on young people and their families.
I learned about things that have shocked me to the core – things I could never repeat.
Yet I was wrong. I struggle to remember when anything on television has had such a powerful impact on me as Adolescence. As the final credits rolled and the raw finality of the ending sank in, I had tears running down my face.
I looked about the room and saw I wasn’t the only one. Two of my daughters, now in their 30s, were among us, and I couldn’t recall the last time they’d put their phones down to watch something on TV – yet they’d done exactly that.
It simply was astounding television and now I am the one asking: ‘Have you watched Adolescence?’
Today’s literary gem
‘If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace’ – John Lennon
