Let’s wind the clock back almost a year to the day. Keir Starmer and co. were absolutely jubilant, as they popped Champagne corks, claiming that they were going to solve all the country’s ills, after a historic election win. Who could have ever predicted that just 12 months on, Starmer would be here. His Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, openly sobbing behind him, tears rolling down her face, after his MPs ensured a humiliating blow to his proposed welfare reforms.
But yet here we are. I know that much of the country doesn’t have one iota of sympathy for Rachel from accounts, as she has now become known. There are just too many calamitous mishaps to even begin to list them. Put it this way: her tenure thus far is not synonymous with success. But putting her terrible record aside, I can’t help but have sympathy for the woman, who, up until now, struck me as someone who operated solely on computer coding.
I have been a councillor for six years now and have experienced all sorts. In the council chamber, Labour and Conservative councillors act like sworn enemies and go head to head, trying their level best to land the killer blow. You need a thick skin, even in local politics, and that’s putting it mildly. It’s a brutal sport – and many will tell you: if it’s too hot, then get out of the kitchen.
However, what’s never happened is seeing a fellow councillor openly sobbing, in clear distress. Thankfully, my emotions have never spilled over in the council chamber. But I do get it – and I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of. We’re all human, after all.
Should she not have gone into the chamber in the first place, knowing her emotions were close to bubbling over? Should she have excused herself, gained some composure and made her way back in? Yes to both. But given she chose to do neither of those things, I think that the astonishing lack of regard from her boss and, actually, others around her was shocking. If I had have blubbed in the council chamber then I would have expected support from the council leader or chair, to temporarily pause proceedings.
So what actually happened? Why didn’t Starmer have the decency to intervene? Why didn’t someone go to sit next to her and give her the sense that she was part of a team that cared?
Well today we have had the answer. A weak excuse from Starmer who claims he didn’t know what was going on, when asked by a journalist why he did not show support to his supposedly trusted ally and most powerful member of his cabinet.
He said he was too busy answering questions.
“In PMQs, it was like bang bang bang… that’s what it was yesterday, and therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything going on in the chamber.”
Crikey. If that’s his level of disconnect from his own right-hand lady, as she sits crying just inches away from him, what does that say about his ability to read the feelings of a nation and lead the UK through a crisis not entirely of his own making? Sadly, I think the answer, one year on from his election, is already searingly obvious