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.

A) teachers are technically middle class

B) no one made more noise about rachel reeves being the first female chancellor than rachel reeves herself

A prison of her own making

It’s threads like this that reaffirm my view that most people are selfish unfeeling twats and will readily stick a knife in given the opportunity.

Then you have come to the right place, my friend.

We both want Labour out - because they are not the paragons of economic stability you would like for your children, or mine.

And no, I do not wish for anarchy.

Is the world of politics brand new to you?

Who do you think should pay for that ‘stability’.

Stability doesn’t come from free. It needs people to contribute financially. Unfortunately less than half the people in this country are actually net contributors and number who don’t contribute a penny is increasing at an alarming rate.

Of course he wouldn’t say if she’d keep her job until next year, cabinet changes happen a lot and if he said Yes then a few months she’s off to a new post he’s be accusers of lying.

She clearly hasn’t slept for a few days

It was all over the news

Celebrating Labour aside for whatever reason I don’t see how you got to this.

What an awful career politics is , fortunately some people do want/ agree to be politicians , because at the end of the day we need them to run the country. They need more respect whether we agree with them or not especially this labour government who have their work cut out and while they might make mistakes I think they are doing their best.

She'll be gone after the Autumn statement I expect. He'll want to wait until he has blamed her for more than just this before he gets rid of her, just to get maximum mileage out of the opportunity. It's brutal but if she can't take the heat (and I certainly wouldn't want to), she shouldn't have taken the job on.

Maybe they missed all the threads earlier about other politicians.

It really was difficult to watch. There have been a couple of occasions when I’ve been under enormous personal stress and been exhausted when I remember being in work calls, or simply in a shop, and tears just came. I had no control, when 10 minutes before I wax ok for the situation I was heading into. I suspect that what happened took RR by surprise or surely she would not have put herself in that position. I feel enormous sympathy for her as a fellow human, though I don’t agree with her policies ( root cause of all this IMO is her and labours manifesto commitment not to raise income tax or NI paid by individuals- hands tied from the off)

I thought the same when Obama was in office. Hes a very fit and healthy man, but he looked like he aged decades while he was president.

That was the right response, politics aside and sympathy for a person that looked broken.
I'm no fan of her policies by any means but a bit of empathy for another person doesn't go amiss.

FWIW, Starmer trying to cut welfare was absolutely the right thing to do, even if he was weak willed and didn’t take the cuts far enough.

What is a disaster is that he caved in. And he is using Reeves as the fall guy. Unfortunately, he has a snake beside him in Rayner, who will bring him down in no time. He should have got rid of her when he had the chance and purged the party of the other loons and fruitcakes.

This, unfortunately. Working in the banking industry, her emotions were not a good sign. One thing they want to see no matter how choppy or absolutely terrifying the conditions are, is a stern face committed to getting the job done. Once you show emotion, youre not in control and if you're not in control then you could become unpredictable - right or wrongly, thats just how they see everything in that industry. This went down like a tonne of bricks.

I really feel sorry for her but then its not a job she had no idea about and thought will give it a shot, its a very public job that you work day and night doing and she should have known its not a job for everyone, its a tiring all consuming draining role where so much is out fo your hands and whats in your hands must be moved delicately or could make things a lot worse, spinning plates in a hurricane comes to mind.

She may have personal/separate issues but to me she looks absolutely broken and to see a woman in that state, for me, is always sad to see.

They didn’t have a mandate to cut the income from the most vulnerable in society.

’Doing their best’, hmm.

What happened during the past 24 hours was tribal politics - red in tooth and claw. The Labour left who kiboshed the original bill were merely pandering to their constituents, that’s all. In simple terms, they want to stay in a job for the next four years.

That hardly squares with doing one’s best, does it?

I completely agree, The leader of the opposition was so cruel and unprofessional

These people are not doing it out of the good ness of their hearts. They are talentless narcissists who know that there is nothing else they could do while robbing a salary and perks that politicians get.

They are basically totally inept and mostly corrupt idiots.

Reported in the press.

This is Starmer every week. Sneering away.

None of the people being sympathetic would have been if it had been a Tory Cabinet member though would they but expect us to be sympathetic because it's RR.

What terrible nonsense

Apologies I really don’t know the ins and outs but look at what they’ve got to sort out. Such a huge mess. It’s easy to criticize but my goodness what a job they’ve got on their hands.