to believe Rachel Reeves was crying because

[LargeDeviation]

1. she was upset when Lindsay Hoyle told her to keep her answers short

2. she had an argument with Keir Starmer (possibly about her keeping her job, or about how to handle the inevitable questions about the new £5.5bn per annum black hole) just before PMQs

3. Keir Starmer refused to say she would keep her job in front of the whole country. If he genuinely wanted her to stay, he would just say 'of course she's going to still be Chancellor' and that would be that.

4. she is under immense pressure because she knows she will have soon to breach her fiscal rules, she knows she is responsible for many of the decisions that will lead to that, and she knows the how serious the consequences of her failure will be. We have seen recently (even just today) how vicious the bond market can be.

In short, I believe she was crying because of professional pressures (understandable ones, though largely of her own making, and about which I have little sympathy) and not nebulous 'personal' reasons.

If her parent or partner or child or grandparent or pet is ill the natural thing is to just say 'sorry, a close relative is in hospital and my emotions got the better of me'. Everybody would understand. You don't need huge reams of evidence but you need to give the bare bones of an explanation. She is trying to style it out but we can all see through it.

I will apologise if I'm wrong but long experience shows that 'personal reasons' almost always means 'I'm skiving or jobhunting' when a colleague in the workplace uses it to excuse their time off.

I believe it means even less when uttered by a politican.

Every year the rich whine about what’s being taken from them. Pathetic.

Wrong. She said it herself in an interview - the lies came straight from her mouth. She deliberately and wilfully set out to deceive the public.

How much more do you want? The demands keep going up.

..,and every year those who make poor life decisions and don’t pay anything into the system whine they don’t get enough free stuff. We need one group, not so much the other.

Do you think going into poorly paid care work is a bad life decision?

What is your definition of rich and what is your definition of poor? Is rich someone earning £110k a year who works Monday, Tuesday and a bit of Wednesday to pay into the system before they see a penny of their salary? Is poor someone who doesn’t work at all?

You need and are going to get a good decade of learning how to support yourself again, the entitlement is mind blowing.

The demands don’t keep going up. The fact is that there’s no money and we have a society that’s older and sicker than ever before. You were very vociferous in your criticism of the welfare bill, where do you want to see cuts? Because it’s either that or increased taxes. Of course Hunt’s £20 billion NI give away didn’t help. If I were Reeves I’d reverse that for a start.

It is if you’re expecting to live the same lifestyle as a Doctor.

She dressed in a particular way to bait critics, that’s 100% certain.

Ange; “What clown dress can I wear today ? I do hope it’s mentioned so I can claim sexism and blather on about sexism for six months and possible get discount/ free designer gear for my glow-up”!

Well for starters I wouldn't have given such a stonking great pay rise to the train drivers without a productivity agreement.

I wouldn't have given out free school breakfast - if a parent can't give their child/children a boiled egg and some toast in the morning, they are pretty useless parents.

I wouldn't have raided the pensioners' pockets. The WFA would have been means tested - eg not for those paying tax at the higher rate

The chancellor (Hunt) described national insurance as a "tax on work" and said it he believed it was "unfair that we tax work twice" when other forms of income are only taxed once. I agree and would have left it alone.

I would have cut benefits to migrants coming over the channel, cut Foreign Aid to those countries who refuse to take back their criminals, and mobilize Border Force to raid and fine those businesses that illegally employ them.

Carwashes are being fined about £3million a year for employing illegal workers.

Fines on "Turkish" barbers brings in £29.2 million yearly. I can't find stats for "dodgy" nail bars.

If you multiply this across all sectors there's lot's of scope for raising money without penalising our old and infirm citizens

I have many friends in business who are now taking on less staff because they can't afford to pay the increases in Min Wage and NI.

Isn’t it something like 54k before your not taking more out then in?
shall we up the minimum wage to that? Shall we make sure all the nurses, teachers, nursery staff, carers etc make that?

It doesn’t matter if anyone thinks it’s right or wrong, it’s an inescapable fact. Proportionately the poorest pay more of their income for everything - flatscreen TV’s, goats, tax, you name it…

Surely the maths wouldn’t math otherwise?

Whats your solution - pay everyone the same? A flat rate of tax for everyone? (I could probably get on board with the last one, but it’s not seen as progressive by most).

No, that’s just another tax. I really don’t think you get it, you’ve run out of other people’s money.

I don’t have other peoples money

not having to house share or use food banks would be a start wouldn’t it

meanwhile the private owners of the company the carer works for is reaping it in. Whilst the tax payers have to top up the poor wages with universal credit.

No of course not, you’re ‘entitled’ to it.

brexit made us less attractive as a business centre. It’s not a sole reason, it’s part of it though

Did it? Why do you say that?

Because we were an English speaking country inside the European Union, so businesses could base themselves here and have all the perks and access to the Union. It was easy for business to be done between USA and Britain, and then onto Europe.
with that commerce came high paid individuals who would be paying high taxes and then onto that they would employ people / use services etc

with Brexit we lost that advantage

if it was a male MP showing “man emotion” yesterday, we would all have bloody well moved on by now.

We'd actually still be hearing about how refreshing it was to see a man show his feelings, about how brave and courageous he was to come into work under such strain etc etc. The double standards to which women in public office are held is staggering.

Nailed the point.👏👏

Couldn't agree more, a male leader showing emotion would be celebrated. Where are all of those posters who said she'd be handing in her resignation this morning?

Eating their words.

I have yet to see any workable alternative funding ideas for those against the benefits bill. No sector wants to lose money. Same with the winter fuel bill. So unsustainable.

Alistair Darling if memory serves temporarily cut VAT when the credit crunch hit to boost sales. If there was a rise in taxes of other sorts coming down the line a temp reduction to the old level of 17.5% might sweeten the medicine.

But you'd then be dependent on preference curves and all sorts of econometrics I only vaguely recall to assess if the cut In the former would outweigh the latter and increase revenue