As Mrs Thatcher stood to give her speech at the 1980 Conservative party conference at Brighton, she was under considerable pressure. The government had slumped in the polls since their decisive election victory barely a year before – imagine that! – while unemployment and inflation remained high. So when left-wing activists interrupted her with cries of ‘Tories out!’, she could have been forgiven for getting flustered. But of course, she did not. She took it in her stride. ‘Never mind, it is wet outside’, she remarked, without missing a beat, as the intruders were removed, and then came the famous line: ‘I expect that they wanted to come in. You cannot blame them; it is always better where the Tories are.’ It’s not the greatest ad lib of all time, but it certainly shows a certain sangfroid and self-possession.
The quick-wittedness and self-confidence required to deal with heckles, interruptions and insults has been part of the successful politician’s toolkit for a very long time
The quick-wittedness and self-confidence required to deal with heckles, interruptions and insults has been part of the successful politician’s toolkit for a very long time. In February 1974, at a fiery public meeting just days before the general election, Enoch Powell was accused of being a Judas, following his recommendation that people should vote Labour to ensure withdrawal from the EEC. ‘Judas was paid!’ was the instant riposte, delivered with characteristic intensity. During the 1966 campaign, a young man threw a sheaf of papers at Harold Wilson, earning a mordant rebuke: ‘I’m afraid your aim is no better than your material, my friend’. Much further back, the 18th-century Radical John Wilkes is said to have been challenged by an opponent who said he’d sooner vote for the Devil. ‘And what if your friend is not standing?’ returned Wilkes.
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Annoying as such interjections might have been, it would surely never have occurred to any of these individuals that it was in principle wrong for members of the public to make their feelings known in such a way. Powell himself is usually credited with the observation that politicians complaining about the press is like a ship’s captain complaining about the sea, and in a free and democratic society the same applies to politicians’ grumbles about the general public. Many of us are doubtless obtuse and ignorant and crankish, full of unreasonable and contradictory demands. Nevertheless, politicians are our servants, not our masters. They exist for our benefit, not the other way round.
The current Chancellor of the Exchequer appears to disagree. Rachel Reeves was visibly taken aback and indignant when she was briefly barracked by a passing tradesman while filming an interview at a fuel station this week. In her best schoolmarmish tone, she scolded the miscreant for his bad manners, suggesting primly that his actions made him somehow ‘unBritish’. On social media dozens of white knights rode to the defence of the fair maid of 11 Downing Street, muttering darkly about sexism and misogyny and attempts to intimidate women. This line of attack was echoed by Labour MPs, such as Stella Creasy.
Such reactions are absurd. For a start, nothing the man said was sexist, or even specifically targeted at Reeves. It was a brief partisan diatribe against the government, delivered ad hoc. The man was loud and assertive and enlivened by profanity, but he was very clearly not intending to be personally threatening, and there was no reason for the Chancellor – whose personal protection officers were presumably close at hand – to regard it as such, in broad daylight in a crowded public place.
🚨 WATCH: Rachel Reeves is repeatedly heckled while at a petrol station in Leeds pic.twitter.com/dFO6d9iPzu
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) May 20, 2026
Moreover, Reeves is not some ordinary woman inexplicably finding himself in a public row. By any sane measure, she is one of the most powerful people in the country. She bears direct responsibility for the financial wellbeing of tens of millions of people. To construe the incident merely as ‘a man being uncouth and boorish to a woman’ is facile and dishonest, because it totally ignores the broader context.
Some commentators, such as Lord Hannan, took Reeves’s side, suggesting that we needed to hold the line of civilised interaction in politics. There is something to this, but as an argument it is incomplete. There are indeed excellent reasons for maintaining expectations of respectful, factual debate in Parliament, in academic settings, and around the dinner table. However, we also have a long history of popular politicking, where a more raucous and less mannered approach has typically been the norm. Consider the instant unfiltered feedback often reported on doorsteps by canvassers. A friend on X mentioned her experience on the campaign trail with Ann Widdecombe, when a voter gave Widders a two-fingered salute and was rewarded with a cheery: ‘Thank you sir – two votes.’
It would be pleasant if all political disputation was undertaken in the manner of a university seminar – quiet and orderly and reflective. Doubtless politicians would prefer that those who dissent from their views do so only in a controlled and deferential manner – the Chancellor reportedly got very cross last summer when a Scottish businessman questioned her too robustly.
But that is not what the world is like. Read any serious British political history and you will see endless stories of tempestuous public meetings where speakers and audience were engaged in a constant rhetorical cut and thrust. This was routine until quite recently – one of the reasons why the generation of Powell and Wilson and Thatcher could think on their feet so well was that they had to, if they wanted to succeed. This was especially true for Labour politicians, who often had to hone their skills in boisterous trade union meetings, rather like stand-up comedians learning to work the crowd in pubs and clubs. Sanctimony and humbug would have received short shrift. They learned to persuade, rather than simply lambast, something in which modern MPs seem to take little interest.
Ferocious and personal insults were common, even at the highest level. Robert Peel’s smile was famously compared to ‘the silver plate on a coffin.’ Disraeli said of a rival that ‘if Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune, and if anybody pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity’, while John Bright said of Disraeli that he was ‘a self-made man who worships his creator’. Admittedly these jibes have a certain wit and verve missing from the harangue experienced by Ms Reeves, but the essential point is that politicians need to learn to put up with a bit of stick, not least from the people whom they represent and over whom they exercise power. Goodness knows they could all do with a bit of humbling, especially now the typical left-wing politician encounters so few serious challenges to their views, as they ascend the ladder from university Labour club to special adviser to comms professional to MP.
What is truly out of keeping with the British political tradition is not a few loud criticisms from a white van man, but a humourless and sanctimonious approach to the views and frustrations of the electorate, who are ultimately paying for the whole show and who have few opportunities to tell their rulers what they really think.
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