When Rachel Reeves delivers her Budget, please don’t talk about what she’s wearing

Can we please all keep our eyes firmly on our first female chancellor’s fiscal cuts rather than her physical appearance? Not likely, says Claire Cohen

It’s the moment we’ve been waiting 800 years for – the first Budget delivered by a female chancellor of the Exchequer. A historic moment in our nation’s proud history. So, naturally, there’s every chance we might spoil it.

Whichever way you slice it, the numbers are likely to be painful. Rachel Reeves is faced with finding what the Treasury says is a £40bn gap in day-to-day spending requirements and savings to fill the £22bn “black hole” Labour claim the previous government left behind. Her first big set piece in government looks likely to paint a picture of economic doom and gloom.

As long as that’s the only picture we’re focused on. If there’s one thing that could make it worse, it would be a load of unhelpful onlookers commenting on the chancellor’s outfit, her hairdo, and whether she’s shown any skin while holding up her ministerial box on Downing Street.

What she has to say might not be what we want to hear, but that’s no excuse for turning the focus on how she looks instead. Already, some onlookers have observed that the chancellor’s hair has looked less shiny than usual in recent days. (Two words for you: dry shampoo. God forbid a woman doesn’t wash and blow dry every waking hour…)

She hasn’t helped herself by discussing her recent dye job that went wrong – rather than giving her locks some light chestnut highlights, she turned all-out redhead. She has since reverted to an autumnal brown bob.

It’s unfortunate that this needs saying, but it does – because when it comes to senior female politicians in the Commons, we have a serious national debt to pay off.

We haven’t come as far as we might like to think since the unenlightened Nineties and Noughties era of “Blair’s Babes” and “Dave’s Darlings”. If I hear anyone utter the phrase “Starmer’s Stunners”, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.

In the political playground, the female anatomy is still considered to be vastly more interesting than anything they could possibly have to say. It wasn’t all that long ago, during the 2016 spring statement, that then home secretary Theresa May – the most senior woman in politics at the time – sparked crass “Breastminster” and “boom and bust” jokes for daring to wear a smart red suit that didn’t cover every inch of flesh up to her eyeballs. It was barely a decade ago that journalist Toby Young posted on social media during Prime Minister’s Questions: “Serious cleavage behind Ed Miliband’s head. Anyone know who it belongs to?”

And it was in 2020 when MP Tracy Brabin, now the mayor of West Yorkshire, was accused on social media of looking as though she’d “just been banged over a wheelie bin” for standing up to speak in parliament wearing a dress that showed her shoulder. This summer’s furore over deputy prime minister Angela Rayner enjoying herself in an Ibiza DJ booth on holiday shows that we still want our female politicians to look and behave in a certain way – one deemed “appropriate” by standards last updated in the 1950s.

Of course, we have occasionally poked fun at men. Who can forget George Osborne’s haircut – teased as being Lego-like by some, a poor Julius Caesar imitation by others – when he delivered the 2014 autumn statement?

But, let’s be honest, it’s not the same. Male politicians are generally seen as being above such trifling matters as dress codes, in a way their female counterparts can’t be. Any mention of a Westminster man’s appearance tends to assume there’s a strategy behind it: he’s trying to woo younger voters, be a man of the people, a disruptor. For a woman, it’s always: “Who does she think she is?”

And Reeves, of course, does pose a serious threat as the first female chancellor. Who knows what she might do: close the gender pay gap? Champion flexible working? Tackle the low wages that disproportionately impact women? Perish the thought!

Hmm. How about, instead, we all agree not to cheapen her Budget, avoid the blokeish braying that could put more women off going into politics and accept that she will be wearing clothes, sporting a haircut and probably have her ankles on display? Now that would be truly historic.