At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday afternoon, Keir Starmer may have been the main event – but many people couldn’t take their eyes off Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor was visibly distressed, wiping tears from her cheeks as Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch tore into the government’s climbdown over welfare the previous evening.
According to Reeves’ spokesperson, the reason she was upset was a ‘personal matter, which – as you would expect – we are not going to get into’.
That gap has left room for speculation, one of the favourite pastimes of politicians and journalists in Westminster.
While some have linked her emotional state to her role or relationship with colleagues, the PM has dismissed those suggestions.
But it’s not possible to deny that those images had an impact. Messages of concern were posted by figures across the political spectrum, and the markets reacted badly to questions of whether Reeves was on the way out.
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Bond yields – a key measure of economic trust in the UK government – jumped up considerably during PMQs, when Starmer ignored Badenoch’s questions about whether the Chancellor was going to be sacked.
They have since fallen back to where they were on Wednesday morning, after the Prime Minister told the BBC she would remain in her role ‘for a very long time to come’.
This morning, Reeves joined Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting at the launch of the NHS Ten Year Plan.
What do we know about why Rachel Reeves was crying at PMQs?
In a sense, it doesn’t matter why Reeves was crying at PMQs – showing a bit of emotion doesn’t affect people’s ability to do their job.
It’s not hard to understand that politicians, particularly those at the top of government, are often under an immense amount of pressure.
That can be exacerbated if – as seems to be the case here – something has happened in their personal life that they would rather keep private.
The Chancellor appears to have had a bit of a disagreement with Speaker Lindsay Hoyle yesterday over her response to being told to keep her answers short in an earlier Parliamentary session.
Other reports of rows with Deputy PM Angela Rayner or Starmer himself have, however, been denied.
And in his interview with the BBC, the Prime Minister said: ‘It’s got nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with what’s happened this week.
‘It was a personal matter for her. I’m not going to intrude on her privacy by talking to you about that, it’s a personal matter.’
Perhaps Reeves will feel comfortable telling the full story about why she felt the way she did at PMQs one day – perhaps she won’t.
Either way is fine. The country doesn’t necessarily need to know every detail.
What’s true, though, is that those pictures seemed to reflect a broader sense of how the government might be feeling after almost exactly a year in power.
Even if it’s not the reason she was in tears yesterday, the Chancellor is likely to be deeply frustrated by the tight fiscal spot she finds herself in – a situation that wasn’t helped by the chaotic welfare bill vote the day before.
Speculation is rife that she may need to resort to raising taxes in her budget later this year after the last-minute scrapping of reforms to the Pip disability benefit left her without billions in expected savings.
But if there’s one reason for Reeves to be cheerful, it’s those bond yields mentioned earlier.
The fact they spiked amid concerns she was leaving and fell back when it was confirmed she was staying suggests the markets – an important source of support for any Chancellor – would rather she stays in No 11.
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