Rachel Reeves was in the House today, responding to the war in the Middle East. That as a statement alone has an air of innate tragicomic potential to it: like Igglepiggle responding to Spanish Flu.
Despite the gravity of the situation, it was more of what we’ve come to expect from Reeves. She did her standard park and bark in the Commons, delivering everything by means of a permanent earnest glottal stop. Like a monoglot tourist in a foreign bar, she makes the mistake of thinking that saying things loudly and slowly will somehow make them effective.
Like a monoglot tourist in a foreign bar, Reeves makes the mistake of thinking that saying things loudly and slowly will somehow make them effective
Of course, what she was saying was even worse than the way that she was saying it. She claimed to be ‘agile in responding appropriately at each moment’, which she probably thinks makes her sound like an economic Catwoman when she actually gives off the vibe of Catweazle. ‘We will be responsive and responsible’, she boasted.
Of course, for Reeves – as reality-phobic a cabinet minister as we have – the war was evidence that she had been right all along: ‘It makes our economic plan even more important’ she crowed. Yet despite graphs showing oil prices now resembling the north face of the Eiger and the atmosphere of blind panic obvious across western economies, Reeves still claimed to be the voice of prudence; all these efforts would be ‘delivered through our ironclad fiscal rules’. Given the state of defence spending that’s the closest we’re going to get to an actual ironclad I suspect.
Listening to Reeves is like playing an exceptionally disheartening game of bingo. All the old canards which the government uses to deflect discussion about their efforts were there: breakfast clubs, benefits, Liz Truss. She genuinely mentioned the phrase ‘under the last government’ than she did ‘strait of Hormuz’.
Everything adds up to Reeves being a pitiable figure, yet she always manages to snatch contempt from the jaws of empathy. Partly that’s because she is driving Britain into a miserable penury and partly because she does so whilst acting as if we’re lucky to have her as Chancellor. In a classic display of Reevesian arrogance she accused Mel Stride of being ‘out of his depth’. She fumbled over figures, she mispronounced things she’s bellowed a thousand times before. The self-appointed voice of prudence has never been so grating.
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