The Crying Game has always been part of British politics. Winston Churchill, our greatest national leader, was famously lachrymose whether in adversity or triumph, while the departures of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 and Theresa May in 2019 were both accompanied by reddened eyes and cracked voices. Less upset was Wiliam Gladstone who was disgusted by the “blubbering” of colleagues at his last Cabinet in March 1894. Earlier in the 19th century, Viscount Goderich acquired the nickname “The Blubberer” after he cried in front of King George IV on his dismissal as Prime Minister in 1828.
The first Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald was a romantic Scot, whose public life was tragically blighted by the death of his wife in 1911. “He was in tears a lot of the time,” recalled his son Malcom. Another Scottish leader. Robert McClennan, who was in charge of the SDP in its final days, cried so regularly that, according to a colleague, there were “concerns about his mental stability”.
Similar anxieties were expressed during the Suez Crisis in 1956 when the Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden broke down in a Cabinet meeting and wailed at his colleagues, “You are all deserting me.” Weeping uncontrollably, he fled to his upstairs flat in Downing Street. Within two months he had resigned as Prime Minister.
But none of this matches the raw emotion displayed in public by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the Commons on Wednesday. Sitting on the front bench during Prime Minister’s Questions, she was unable to hold back a stream of tears when Sir Keir Starmer – goaded by the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch – failed to express his full support for her. It was a remarkable scene that embodied the Government’s turmoil and bitterness over the humiliating collapse of their welfare policy.
Although Labour have stressed that the cause of her anguish was a “personal matter” rather than anything political, the Chancellor has been under immense pressure in recent days because of the ferocious internal opposition to welfare reform.
Her determination to make cuts and shore up the Government’s fiscal position has reportedly led to angry confrontations with backbench MPs and Ministerial colleagues. She is also said to have been bruised by a clash with the Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, the darling of the left-wing activists.
Indeed, elements of the Labour left, sensing the weakness of Starmer and Reeves after this harrowing week, are on manoeuvres to precipitate a leadership crisis. It is astonishing how quickly the pair’s authority has been eroded. A year ago Labour came to power with a massive majority. But failing on every front, Starmer’s inept, divided and vacillating Government has seen the most dramatic plunge in popularity of any administration in history.
As Chancellor, Reeves has been a key architect of this catastrophe. Growth was meant to be her top priority but instead she has driven up taxes, debts, borrowing and unemployment.
The fiasco over welfare reform is another vital element in this catalogue of failure. “This Government must not and will not duck big challenges,” declared Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall. But that is exactly what Labour Ministers have done. The Government had no stomach for the fight, offering so many concessions that the Welfare Reform Bill became utterly pointless.
Shaken by discord, the Labour Party has cocooned itself in its traditional socialist comfort zone, where no awkward questions are asked about the dependency culture or the destruction of personal responsibility. But this sentimentality is a travesty of reality. In truth the lax system is ruthlessly exploited by the workshy, just as the definitions of disability have been so widened as to encompass drug addiction and even alcoholism.
The Chancellor’s tears for fears were rational. She knows that the black hole now left in the public finances will have to be filled by higher taxes, dragging Labour deeper into the mire of unpopularity. At the same time, the party will be gripped by more chaos and division, especially when Starmer’s weak leadership comes under threat from Rayner. If she gains the crown, that really will be a real cause for weeping.