It was the expression that spoke for a nation. As Rachel Reeves delivered her speech on new transport investment, workers at the Mellor Bus factory in Rochdale appeared less than impressed. And when she embarked on a lecture about the Treasury Green Book, one increasingly desperate employee looked as if he was contemplating making a break for it and hurling himself into the River Roch.
Asked at the end of her address what they thought of Reeves’s announcement, one of his colleagues simply responded: ‘My legs ache.’
Britain empathises. The sight of the Chancellor forlornly attempting to breathe life into her dying economic plan is becoming agonising to watch. Which is why Wednesday’s spending review must be her last.
Reeves’s authority – and with it her utility to Keir Starmer and the Government – has completely collapsed. The faces of the Mellor workers did not lie.
Last week the pollster YouGov published a survey of voters’ attitudes to the Government’s performance in a number of key policy areas. At the bottom – inevitably – was immigration with a subterranean approval rating of minus 60. But only marginally above that was taxation, with a rating of minus 58, welfare at minus 53, and the economy in general at minus 52.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivers a speech during a visit to Mellor Bus in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, to announce a multi-billion-pound boost for city transport it in North and Midlands
It is impossible to think of a more damning public indictment of Rachel Reeves’s entire economic, fiscal and political strategy.
She placed taxation – and her pledge to protect the pay packets of ordinary working people – at the heart of last year’s Budget. She promised to take an iron grip of the welfare budget. She boasted about going ‘further and faster to kickstart growth’. Yet in the eyes of the British people, she is comprehensively failing to deliver any of it.
Which is, in turn, creating a domino effect within government. As Reeves’s standing in the country plummets, so does her standing among her Cabinet colleagues.
On Thursday it emerged the Chancellor had lost her battle with Environment Secretary Ed Miliband over an attempt to water down his £13billion warm homes insulation project. Last month Angela Rayner led an open assault on her tax plans, and last week secured the backing of the 100-strong Labour Growth Group in her battle with Reeves over the housing budget. Opposition across the front and backbenches has forced her into a panicked U-turn over winter fuel payments.
According to government insiders, this erosion of her credibility is emboldening ministers to take a stand against her.
‘People are digging in,’ one minister reported to me. ‘The negotiations over the final spending settlements for some of the departments still hasn’t been sorted. They’re going to carry on fighting it out over the weekend.’
Reeves’s collapsing authority has also been mirrored by a collapse in her wider political support. This month’s Labour List poll of Labour members’ perception of the Cabinet’s performance had Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner top with approval ratings of more than 70 points.
Languishing at the very bottom was the Chancellor, with a net approval rating of minus 28.
Some of Reeves’s colleagues are becoming concerned at the toll the job – and the increasing realisation events are spiralling out of her control – is having on her. ‘She looks terrible,’ one minister observed. ‘She looks absolutely exhausted.’
Another explained she has now taken to blaming her political woes on old-fashioned sexism.
‘I was talking to her a few days ago,’ they revealed, ‘and she was saying, “Do you think I’d be getting this level of criticism if I wasn’t a woman?” ’
‘As Rachel Reeves delivered her speech on new transport investment, workers at the Mellor Bus factory in Rochdale appeared less than impressed’
But an even bigger worry within the Cabinet is that Reeves is now becoming so obsessed with changing the negative narrative surrounding her that she is in danger of boxing herself in with a series of additional commitments she has no possibility of meeting.
‘The real problem for her is she’s locking herself into things she can’t deliver,’ one minister explained. ‘So there’s going to be a lot about how her spending statement is aimed at delivering security for the country.
‘But how can you promise to deliver economic security when Trump’s doing what he’s doing on tariffs? Or security for the nation when Putin’s roaming around?’
Some evidence of this can already be seen in the shambolic management of the winter fuel U-turn. Reeves wants to take credit for reversing what she recognises is a deeply unpopular policy. But she is also terrified of sending the wrong signal to the bond markets, which are becoming sceptical of her determination and ability to retain control of government spending.
So she has begun deploying the ludicrous argument that since November’s Budget she has miraculously filled in the £22billion financial black hole she ‘inherited’, rebalanced the public finances and placed the economy on a stable footing.
This, as everyone knows, represents fantasy economics, and even more fantastical politics.
Borrowing is soaring. Growth forecasts have been slashed. Her fiscal headroom has all but been eroded. With the result the economy is currently about as stable as Mount Etna.
The common view in Westminster is that if Keir Starmer were to move Reeves in his upcoming summer reshuffle, it would be an admission of economic failure.
But what the Prime Minister needs to recognise is that if he fails to act, things will only get worse. For him, for the country and for Rachel Reeves herself.
It is an open secret in government that whatever Reeves unveils in the spending round, taxes are going to have to rise.
And when they do, Sir Keir has a choice. To either watch the last vestiges of Reeves’s economic credibility be destroyed. Or watch the last vestiges of his and his
Government’s economic credibility be destroyed.
It’s less than six months since the Chancellor told the CBI: ‘I’m really clear – I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.’ If she is still sitting in No 11 when that pledge is broken, it will be her, and Starmer’s, ‘read my lips moment’. And just as there was no route to political recovery for George Bush Snr, at that moment there will be no route back for Labour. No promise from the Government, on any issue, will ever be believed again.
The expressions on the faces in Rochdale could be replicated at any workplace in the country. Reeves’s credibility with the British people has collapsed. As it has within the Cabinet. And the wider Labour movement.
Soon it will collapse among business, and possibly the bond markets. It’s time for the Prime Minister to put his Chancellor, and the country, out of their misery.
