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.

NI policy is the biggest. Some other stuff they’ve u turned on due to pressure showing incompetence.

The cuts they can’t get through are linked to lower growth and receipts.

There's always been vitriol in politics! You need a thick skin to have that job. And you need to understand that it's not just you that is impacted by displaying those emotions - whatever they may be - it's other people's lives. Specifically the immediate impact was to send the pound falling and the markets to wobble. Which impacts a vast number of people. It would be like a lawyer crying in court: it would negatively impact their client! And in this case the client is all of us. If she couldn't control her emotions she should have stayed out of the commons until she could.

Starmer doesn’t answer a single question. It’s just sneering and jeering in return every week. Pointless.

I meant the poster re Badenoch. But yes Reeves can’t cry and impact markets.

Yet Trump doesn’t seem to age. He looks older than he did in 2016 obviously, but only due to the normal advances of time, not pressure.

I completely agree. Politics is very rough. I assume that she has had a very rough time lately. And she has lost nearly everything and earned the contempt of a lot of her colleagues. That is something most of us are lucky never to experience

I have every sympathy for Rachel Reeves.

I have utter contempt for Kemi Badenoch and the way she spoke today.
I mean, I didn't think my contempt for her could be more than it was before I saw the news, but she has managed to sink to a new low.

In what way is the NI policy a mess? U turning isn’t really a mess it’s just listening to opinions . They are trying to get through cuts but just look at the fury over winter fuel. I don’t have the answers I’m afraid but I recognize it’s a difficult job.

This. I feel sorry for Reeves as I would for anyone clearly upset, but I feel for those who have suffered tremendous stress as a result of her policies more.

One might have expected Rayner would at least have glanced at Reeves, particularly knowing the cameras would be on them all.

I think it is possible to separate the two and feel both.

NI policy has impacted growth and tax receipts, and SMEs. Have a look at articles on it.

U turns show incompetence but also they now have a funding issue.

When we start with “I think” it indicates we are offering an opinion and I am as entitled to mine as the next person.
No, not because she shed a few tears - because I think she is a good person doing a difficult job. (Again, for clarity, that’s an opinion.)

The country is almost broke but basically a Labour Government cannot fix it because of ideology and the difficult decisions that need to actually be made conflict with that ideology, and she knows it.

There are too many people claiming they cannot work who would not have been supported in that, or would not even have thought about claiming it in the past. There were always chancers of course. And I am NOT saying that all people on MH disability are lying. I do believe there are people who genuinely just cannot work because of their problem. But I have just moved from working in general mental health because I could not take it any more - people marching in to their first appointment demanding I write them letters saying they cannot work due to MH without even being assessed. And they were always the ones who did not engage with any treatment, had endless excuses about why they had not done any of the treatment plan and got really pissed off if you would not just go along with them. They give the people with genuine problems a bad rep.

The other growing group are the people who think normal feelings and reactions are pathological and they should not have to have them. Everyone has anxiety, low mood or does not want to do things at times - increasing numbers of people find any kind of discomfort or distress intolerable and 'proof' that they are ill. Again, not talking about ND, or people whose MH is generally poor.

Reeves has brought this all on herself. History will rightly not be kind on her and I suspect that she’s starting to realise that.

She has harmed so many people it is hard to have any sympathy for her whatsoever.

She was crying because her disastrous budget has stunted economic growth, businesses are not expanding and are reducing staffing levels.

Her economic figures are smashed and she has a big black hole in her budgetary figures. She now has an even bigger black hole now that the labour rebels refused to support the changes to the welfare bill. This wasn’t thought through in sufficient detail and whilst it’s necessary to address the problems here it was handled in a crack handled manner by everyone involved.

She’s billions of pounds adrift in her budget and knows it.

She and Starmer made unrealistic promises from the get go regarding taxation.
She then seriously hampered business and economic growth that has significantly impacted her economic figures, accepting there’s also been other external factors that’s exacerbated the financial turmoil further.

She knows she’s damaged as is Starmer. She knows she can’t round the square. Her colleagues are also gunning for her.

Her boss refused to back her today when asked.

She has many reasons to cry, but it’s totally unprofessional and further illustrates how out of her depth she is within her role.

Oh, I heard something really interesting about this - how a lot of his weird look is to disguise how elderly he would look otherwise - like the orange tan and weird hair colour are a means to an end, and his suits are built up to disguise how frail he can look.

There may have always been Vitriol in politics but that doesn’t make it right.

Whatever it was hadn’t just happened. Her eye bags were huge! She’d clearly been up all night. I think she’s been fired. I don’t know why someone didn’t help her to discreetly leave and compose herself :/

She is an obscenely overpaid incompetent individual who was perfectly happy to take the money but didn’t ever expect to have to work for it. At her level this is all part of the territory, male or female, makes no difference. She has coasted through life getting away with fraud, deception and lies (I’m sure her previous colleagues can absolutely verify this) and thought the gravy train would continue.

Rachel from accounts - the chickens have finally come home to roost - it’s judgement day. No amount of self piteous tears is going to help her now - and neither should they. You take the gold shilling, you pay the price.

Funny that, because I saw contempt from Reeve’s own colleagues - Starmer and Rayner.

Watch the footage again - see if you can spot it too.

I think Reeves has most likely been wounded more by members of her own party rather than anything Kemi said.

It's interesting, isn't it, how suddenly it's 'her' budget and 'her' fiscal rules, like the rest of the cabinet had nothing to do with it.

This is the glass cliff in action: give a woman a senior position when everything's fucking up and then point and laugh at her when it goes down the pan. Men emerge squeaky clean.

Yes, very odd that.

A cabinet colleague, and a ‘sister’ after all…