Chancellor’s Emotional Breakdown Caps Week of Government Chaos – Guido Fawkes

Between midday and 12:10 p.m. sterling slumped three times. That was their response to Keir. But after 10 minutes, the markets had clocked the Chancellor’s face and the pound went into a vertical dive.

She started out bravely but it was clear to sketch writers and other psychiatric diagnosticians she was suffering. She sat hunched, sunken, head dropped between her shoulders. It’s not a great place to be going through this sort of crisis, there on the front bench of PMQs.

If she’d held it at that sad level, they might have got away with it.

The PM was in great form. Joshing with the front bench opposite. “Proud” of this, “proud” of that, “proud” of his Government’s breakfast clubs and soaring business confidence and economic growth, proud of the record defence spending he not only promised but had “delivered” (sic).

Behind him, his Chancellor’s mouth was working away, her tongue scouring her gums, searching through her cheeks as though clearing a cottonmouth. Then there was the twitching. The flickering expressions. Clearly, something was very, very wrong.

Her badinage with the PM had been well rehearsed, it was a two-faced brave face. They were a team snatching victory from the defeat of the Welfare Bill she had fought so hard for. She even managed the most terrible thing, a smile. That was very painful to witness.

Worse, much worse was to come. When Keir didn’t endorse his Chancellor, her mouth started a rhythm of ducking down at the corners and springing back up. She was swallowing hard, bringing it up, gulping it back. Ten-year-olds do this, when it all gets too much. The chin buckled, her lips quivered and then it was suddenly seen, the incredible thing, the unprecedented thing. As a climax of a crazed week of governmental chaos, two fat tears were rolling down either side of the Chancellor’s face.

The woman – so boomingly proud of her pioneering position – will be now be forever known as the first chancellor to be seen openly weeping on the front bench in front of a global audience. It is to be hoped that this will not obscure the fact that she, singled-handedly, crashed the British economy, took bond yields to new levels, caused the flight of wealth creators, robbed Peter to pay Paul and then taxed Paul into bankruptcy.

Kemi, by contrast, has found her voice. Her supporters may be rewarded for their obdurate loyalty.

Today, she crafted her remarks rather than chucking a bowl of slops across the despatch boxes. She asked a number of questions that had answers. She was funny, indignant, angry, fiery. She even made a declaration of principle – her party always enjoys that . “The Conservative party believes that this country needs to live within its means.” A cautious step in the right direction – she may need to pick up the pace for an election in 2027.

Fingers flashing (she has an enormous forefinger), eyes blazing, mouth smiling, she identified individual rebels, laughingly appointed Paul Waugh “Toady of the Week”, defended the Tory record on welfare reform, and noticed the decline of the Chancellor (still only in her hunched, cottonmouth stage). “She looks absolutely miserable. Labour MPs are going on the record saying that the Chancellor is toast . . . How awful for the Chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

Her amused manner stood in cavalier contrast to the puritan misery on the Government front bench. Arms folded, downturned faces, Yvette grieving, Angela registering a sewage leak. Nandy pitying but uncaring. Shabana wondering how a leadership run would help her career. Heidi Alexander magnificently unimpressed with “the calm, patient work of government”. 

Keir didn’t care. He gave every appearance of being even more in control than his appearance of control a year ago.

It was a display of psychotic optimism. He has been through a catastrophic and humiliating collapse of authority but remains undaunted. His welfare strategy has been demolished by his Lilliputian backbenchers but he stands in the rubble, like a heroic dwarf, declaring victory.

This isn’t Henry V rallying troops to the breech. This isn’t Churchill after Dunkirk. This is Keir Starmer of Arkham Asylum re-rendering reality to conform to his manifesto.

At one point he even said, “The only way to get energy bills down is through renewables.” In the adjacent cell is Ed Miliband. They pass each other notes.

So, ave atque vale Rachel Reeves. Her great failing was, alas, an egregious one in an economist. She seemed not to know that demand curves slope downwards to the right. It’s not exactly a law but it’s a rule. When its price goes up, demand for the product goes down. In one application, we see it in the flight of private school pupils. At another, in the deindustrialisation of Britain by the price of energy. And at a level so personal the Chancellor must at last understand it: now that the political cost of Reeves has gone up, the demand for Reeves has gone down.