All hail the embalmer’s art. Labour spinners, in emergency reconstruction mode, paraded a remodelled Rachel Reeves at a London health-centre event. At least we were told it was the Chancellor. Madame Tussaud’s might want to check that one of the waxworks hasn’t done a runner.
Twenty-three hours earlier Ms Reeves was in a state of quivering distress in the Commons. Now she was smiling. And smiling. Her cheeks were two beach balls, the skin as stretched and twangy as prophylactic latex. Her teeth were bared in a mad smile. Her eyes crinkled at the edges even if the jellies themselves looked lifeless in their sockets.
The poor creature had been wheeled out as warm-up artiste for one of Sir Keir Starmer‘s scintillating speeches, this time about some 10-year health plan. The PM was at his whizziest, clapping his hands, projecting at least 25 per cent too much heartiness. He kept saying ‘fung-tastic’. No one does artificial delight more clunkily – except, perhaps, poor Rachel. Watching her was pretty fair agony.
It being a medical facility, nurses stood in a crescent behind the Chancellor. They watched her with close interest. It is always good to have professionals in attendance, horse syringes at the ready in case a patient goes tonto.
She made a two-minute speech. Houston, this is progress. It may not yet be the 60 minutes required at a budget but there are months before that. At present it is a matter of taking each hour as it comes and, with luck, limping to the end of the week. On Wednesday she would not have been able to manage more than a few words without Stan Laurel whimpering. Two minutes was an achievement. If they could save the Bionic Man, perhaps the miracle can be repeated.
Her delivery? Odd. But then she has never been exactly a fluent orator. ‘It’s great to be here today,’ she Daleked, pushing the air past those terrifying (terrified?) teeth. Her eyebrows did a lot of jumping. Trotting out some words about how ‘proud’ she was of ‘the health of our nation’s finances’, she held that smile. Here was Ophelia cast in a Palladium chorus line. Or imagine a beaten boxer the morning after a fight, bruises disguised by the corner-men.
As she finished her remarks there were insistent whoops led by a few partisans at the back. It felt forced. Coercive.
Prime ministers and Chancellors have occasionally concocted stunts to show they do not completely hate one another. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair visited an ice-cream van. Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson went to a bar. Even so, the sight of Sir Keir and his damaged colleague at a health centre counter evoked notions of a man delivering a friend to the local psychiatric ward.
Cameras caught Reeves’ face, still plumped by unhappiness, gazing upwards, pop-eyed
Sir Keir had been programmed to say that he was ‘in lockstep’ with his Chancellor. This was the line he kept uttering in his own speech and in broadcast interviews. His health plan came with a document entitled ‘Fit For The Future’. He insisted that Ms Reeves was up to the job. She was going to be Chancellor ‘into the next election and beyond it’. This was perhaps no more delusional than the rest of his guff about how he had fixed the economy and how we were now safe in the hands of ‘stable’ Labour.
Towards the end of an event that was all about optics, Sir Keir averred: ‘I don’t believe in performative politics. I don’t believe in rhetorical speeches with nothing to back them up.’ This was said with the usual immense self-regard. He really does think he is tremendously good at being prime minister. Most unaccountably, however, voters seem to consider him a steaming dud.
He and Ms Reeves had an awkward hug. Cameras caught her face, still plumped by unhappiness, gazing upwards, pop-eyed. The supposedly assured pilot of our nation’s finances resembled a sad, startled owlet.
Heaven knows how this can be sustained.
