Six days earlier Rachel Reeves had assured the Commons, in her Spring statement, that she was turning Britain into El Dorado. Now she came tripping into the chamber to chirrup that there would ‘likely be upwards pressure on inflation’.
Bin last week’s forecasts! It’s all gone nipples-up and we’re going to have to invent some new ones.
In Fleet Street’s olden days, when football correspondents filed late copy by telephone, an injury-time goal splurge could cause panic. Having dictated a masterpiece on how Rovers had beaten City, they had to alter the facts molto rapido. And so they’d shout: ‘Insert “not”!’
The Chancellor had come to the Commons to talk about the Iran attacks. Opposition MPs would probably have given her a relatively sympathetic hearing, this being a time of national peril and all that.
But Ms Reeves is a limited personality. She lacks the honeyed gear-changes in tone, gesture, pace and language that skilful parliamentarians can manage. She sounded peevish, petulant, narrowly self-defensive. There was much blinking and umming, and even some eye-rolling. She spoke faster than you want to speak if you hope to offer reassurance.
‘Reeves came tripping into the chamber to chirrup that there would “likely be upwards pressure on inflation”, writes QUENTIN LETTS
‘As I have demonstrated time and time again, I will take the necessary decisions,’ she jabbered, loudly. ‘I am clear-eyed. I will be responsible.
‘Every step I have taken since the election has built the national infrastructure. I have prioritised growth. I have increased our financial buffers.’
I, I, I. Ladies and gentlemen, we had solipsism overload.
Sir Edward Leigh (Con, Gainsborough), Father of the House, murmured: ‘I’m not sure if in the middle of a war it helps to be overtly party-political.’
It did not help the Chancellor that near her on the front bench sat the Treasury minister Torsten Bell, 43 going on 30.
Young Bell is incapable of sitting still. He feels an urge to offer constant commentary on what is being said, either by nodding heavily and pursing his lips like a gourmet if he approves, or by frowning and tutting and heckling if he disapproves.
When the Conservatives, Lib Dems or Reform were questioning Ms Reeves, Mr Bell made a constant spectacle of himself. Any inclination in the House to give the Chancellor the benefit of the doubt was squandered.
‘As I have demonstrated time and time again, I will take the necessary decisions,’ she jabbered, loudly. ‘I am clear-eyed. I will be responsible.’
Simon Hoare (Con, N Dorset) urged her to ‘actively get a grip on this’ and to keep petrol prices as low as possible. During this question Mr Bell did strange hand gestures, almost as if he was suggesting that Mr Hoare had been at the booze (which, alas, he had not; Mr Hoare is a tremendously pompous but sober little chap and might be improved by a few pints of lunchtime snakebite).
We heard repeatedly about ‘price-gouging’ by petrol firms. This is an Americanism. It means ‘profiteering’. Ms Reeves, never the most felicitous of communicators, managed to call it ‘price-gorging’. Mr Bell’s eyes bulged a bit at that.
The Chancellor invited MPs to report greedy petrol stations to the Competition and Markets Authority. They could do worse than to visit a filling station I know on the outskirts of Ross on Wye, Herefordshire.
Talking of ‘financial buffers’, Lord Lamont, himself once chancellor, was watching the statement from the peers’ gallery. He succumbed to a nasty bout of coughing and for a few moments there seemed a danger we would need emergency mechanics to attend the scene with their jump leads.
After a cheapening hour from Ms Reeves the despatch box was yielded to John Healey, Defence Secretary. What a transformation. At once a sense of political seriousness filled the chamber. Mr Healey and his shadow, James Cartlidge, by no means played softly with one another.
There were sharp exchanges about the Ministry of Defence’s preparedness, or lack of it, and about past Tory governments’ culpability for the Royal Navy’s non-performance in the crisis so far.
But there was a sense of national endeavour, goodwill and of honesty that was lacking when our low-grade Chancellor was at the despatch box.