Rachel Reeves has been speaking to the newspapers trying to sell her Budget, which given her communication abilities is a bit like asking King Herod to do your babysitting. The Chancellor of the Exchequer appears to be getting the excuses in early; it’s almost as if she, like everyone else, knows that next week’s announcements will be a catastrophe.
The thread that comes through the article is that the country is somehow being punished for the Chancellor’s teenage insecurities
Reeves’s big message is that she’s been ‘underestimated all her life’. A humbler person might wonder why everyone has consistently assessed her to be not up to the job rather than assuming that the judgement of everyone ever has been wanting. I want to assure Rach that most of us do not underestimate her at all; we know she’s capable of getting much, much worse.
In an ‘away from the cameras’ piece with the FT, one of Reeves’s most tiresome tropes rears its head. There is an exceptionally tedious idea in the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s head that people challenge her because she’s a woman and not because she is turning the British economy into a clown car. In the FT piece we see a classic example of this when a local business leader in Scotland challenges Reeves ‘robustly… she believes rudely’ about her taxes on North Sea oil and gas. He doesn’t get an answer about economics but a hectoring on gender politics instead. “‘Talk to me with respect’ Reeves says, glaring at her interlocutor. Eyes shift nervously towards the floor. ‘I’m the Chancellor of the Exchequer.’” She seems to think that playing at being a Powerpuff girl is a substitute for economic competence.
To be fair to the Financial Times they also included this intensely funny line: ‘Reeves demands respect – and she believes that with her Budget, in spite of everything, she will earn it.’ There are people in our nation’s mental institutions who believe that they are the Queen of Sheba who are less delusional than this.
The real comic gems appeared in the Times, courtesy of Starmerite hagiographer Tom Baldwin. For the Blairite apparatchik in government this is the equivalent of sitting down to have a profile written by the Venerable Bede. Nevertheless, we still get glimpses into the perma-awkwardness that is Reeves’s interaction with the general public.
On a visit to a school she has to ask a group of bored teenagers, ‘Do you, er, know who I am?’ If there is a child in the blessed throes of innocence where they are spared from being aware of the existence of Rachel Reeves it seems exceptionally cruel to remove them from it. It gets worse:
‘Eventually, a girl is coaxed into describing her coursework on the history of Britain’s political parties. “So, which one do I represent?” asks the politician with anxiety creeping into her voice. “Is it Labour?” the girl replies before adding, almost inaudibly under her breath, “And that shows I know.”’
The loss of innocence is really a tragic thing.
While there is clearly an attempt to give Reeves an ‘origin story’ it actually emerges more as a villain arc. The thread that comes through the article is that the country is somehow being punished for the Chancellor’s teenage insecurities. There are constant references to how she was ‘the uncool kid’, her self-identified role as a hard-working ‘swot’ and in particular her resentment of others. Posh boys at chess tournaments, fathers at her school and Christ Church, Oxford, are just some of the slighters on whom she has turned her back. She describes being called ‘Rachel from Accounts’ as ‘exhausting’, which is an interesting adjective. I suppose when your entire worldview is based on monumental self-delusion then the insertion of the truth will tire you out. Naturally Reeves doesn’t acknowledge the origin of her nickname, which emerged when she was found to have embellished her CV in multiple different ways. Speaking ‘as a woman’, there is something intensely irritating about this totally unearned sense of entitlement.
Reeves also insists that none of her male predecessors ever had to put up with such scrutiny or opprobrium, which simply isn’t true. Say what you want about George Osborne, he didn’t have a go at the members of the public who booed him at the Olympics. Nor did Gordon Brown caterwaul about Gillian Duffy being nasty to him. And that’s before we even get to the fates of some of her Medieval and Early Modern predecessors – I don’t recall Thomas Cromwell giving a no-holds-barred, pre-decapitation interview about what a big meanie Henry VIII was and how it was class snobbery that brought him down, though that would have been a more interesting read.
At last year’s Budget, Reeves made much of being the first female Chancellor of the Exchequer. It betrayed a tin-eared expectation that the businesses soon to go bust and the farmers fearing for their livelihoods should nevertheless be pleased that the person inflicting such pain had two X-chromosomes. There is a sense here that representation is what matters most, more than measurable achievement; ‘If you can’t see it then you can’t be it’, as the saying goes. Alas, raising taxes to generational highs may not be what inspires the next generation of #Girlboss politicians to action. ‘Put down the Barbie, girls, there’s an economy that needs screwing!’ Reeves forgets that respect is earned. Focusing on identity politics amid genuine financial pain for so many households feels decadent, even hubristic. The Chancellor approached last autumn’s budget with extreme arrogance and has obviously learned absolutely nothing since then.
‘When I was growing up’, Reeves tells Baldwin, ‘I was sick and tired of being told that people from ordinary backgrounds weren’t capable of doing well.’ In fairness to her, she is proving beyond all doubt that a girl from a Comp can screw the country up just as thoroughly as any Etonian.
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