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Rachel Reeves said she was ‘clearly’ upset during her appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions but insisted she was ‘cracking on with the job’.
The UK chancellor and Prime Minister Keir Starmer shared a hug, and the chancellor smiled throughout her first public appearance after she broke down in tears in the House of Commons.
Reeves would not, however, be drawn into answering questions about the ‘personal matter’ which had upset her ahead of Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions.
She told broadcasters: ‘Clearly I was upset yesterday and everyone could see that. It was a personal issue and I’m not going to go into the details of that.
‘My job as Chancellor at 12 o’clock on a Wednesday is to be at PMQs next to the prime minister, supporting the government and that’s what I tried to do.
‘I guess the thing that maybe is a bit different between my job and many of your viewers’ is that when I’m having a tough day it’s on the telly and most people don’t have to deal with that.’
The chancellor rejected suggestions that her tears were related to a conversation with Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle or another member of government.
‘People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday. Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job,’ she added.
Starmer gave a full-throated defence of his chancellor, and said he had not appreciated how upset she was while he was focused on the cut and thrust of Parliament’s most-viewed weekly event.
On Thursday, the chancellor appeared alongside the prime minister and Health Secretary Wes Streeting as the government launched it’s 10-year plan for the NHS in London.
Reeves made no mention of Wednesday’s incident in the Commons as she made her first public appearance since crying in the chamber.
Smiling as she spoke at a health centre in London, the chancellor insisted the NHS plan was ‘good for the health of our nation and good for the health of our nation’s finances’.
She also stopped to take selfies with nurses and other healthcare staff who were gathered for the launch.
Starmer and Reeves embraced as he made his way to the podium to give a speech after the chancellor had finished.
The prime minister poured praise upon her in an open show of unity, hailing the decisions made by the Chancellor as playing a part in the government investing ‘record amounts in the NHS’.
Starmer said he did not ‘appreciate’ that Reeves was crying behind him at PMQs as the event is ‘pretty wired’.
‘It goes from question to question and I am literally up, down, question, looking at who is asking me a question, thinking about my response and getting up and answering it,’ he said.
Starmer added: ‘It wasn’t just yesterday. No prime minister ever has had side conversations in PMQs. It does happen in other debates when there is a bit more time, but in PMQs it is bang, bang, bang, bang.
‘That is what it was yesterday and therefore I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber.’
As the prime minister took questions from the media, several journalists invited Reeves to comment on her tears, but only Starmer answered.
Earlier, the prime minister said all people could be caught ‘off guard’ by their emotions, but the chancellor had to deal with it while on camera in Parliament.
He said she was doing an ‘excellent’ job, would remain in place beyond the next general election, and that they were both absolutely committed to the chancellor’s ‘fiscal rules’ to maintain discipline over the public finances.
UK government bonds rallied and the pound steadied on Thursday, after reassurances from the prime minister about the Chancellor’s future.
The sight of her in tears on Wednesday, and the £5 billion black hole in her public spending plans as a result of the welfare U-turn had spooked the markets, triggering a sharp sell-off of bonds, with the yield seeing the sharpest increase since US President Donald Trump’s tariff plans shook up financial markets in April.
Back in the Commons chamber, Commons Leader Lucy Powell defended her ‘friend’ Reeves, and said ‘she’s got more class than most of the rest of the members opposite on the frontbench’.
The Conservatives meanwhile suggested Reeves’ public show of emotion was not acceptable.
In a post on X shared by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho said: ‘Leadership is hard. There are good days, some very good, and bad days, some very bad. The resilience you need for top jobs is superhuman.
‘But if a chief exec cried in public, if a military chief said they hadn’t read the operational plan properly because they had a bad day, they would not be forgiven for it.’
By David Lynch, Ella Pickover, David Hughes, Nina Lloyd, and Rhiannon James
Press Association: News
source: PA
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