No, Keir Starmer is not going to sack Rachel Reeves – and nor should he
If the prime minister were to remove his chancellor over failed policies that he himself had agreed, he would destroy his government, says John Rentoul
It may be a silly question, but is the prime minister to blame for encouraging speculation about Rachel Reeves’s future when he failed to answer it, twice, after his speech on the great opportunities of AI?
Keir Starmer said the chancellor had his “full confidence” and was doing a “fantastic job”, but would not say that she would remain in post for the duration of the parliament.
This contradicted one of the unwritten rules of British politics, which is that chancellors are always “unassailable” – Margaret Thatcher’s description of Nigel Lawson – until they aren’t.
The reason for this is that prime ministers’ fates are tied to those of their most important minister. That is especially so in this case: Starmer and Reeves have been a double act for four years. They fought the election together, and they have governed together. They are united on the big decisions, even if Starmer has delegated responsibility for some of the tough choices to her, which was a sign that he trusts her judgement.
The winter fuel decision was hers alone, and Starmer and Morgan McSweeney, the new chief of staff, soon thought it was a mistake, but it is not the kind of thing you change your chancellor over.
And you can’t change your chancellor over the big decisions, such as raising taxes, because they are always the joint property of Nos 10 and 11. John Major sacked Norman Lamont eight months after the exchange-rate debacle of 1992, but that was his policy more than it was Lamont’s and it did him no good to make a belated scapegoat of his chancellor.
Ken Clarke – who succeeded Lamont as chancellor – was quite right to say last night that Reeves must stay. He is well aware of how disastrous it would be to make a change so early in a parliament.
So why didn’t Starmer simply say, “Yes, of course”, when he was asked on Monday if Reeves would still be chancellor at the next election? Was it simply inexperience, in that he failed to understand the ritualistic nature of the question? That question is an invitation to offer total unswerving support, uncomplicated by common sense about the folly of trying to predict unknown unknowns over the next four years.
It wouldn’t have mattered if Starmer had said that Reeves would continue to be chancellor under all future governments of whichever party until the heat death of the universe, as long as he had given a clear affirmative answer to the question put to him.
By failing to do so, the prime minister set off a hullabaloo of speculation among journalists, who started to draw up a list of runners and riders with renewed enthusiasm. Wes Streeting would be the best alternative, as a good communicator with the right instincts. Some question whether he is up to the mark in his numeracy or knowledge of economics, but as Stanley Baldwin said when he asked Winston Churchill to be chancellor in 1924 and Churchill protested that he was no good with numbers: “They give you the numbers.”
The more serious reservation is that Streeting is needed at health, where he has already started to turn the supertanker of the backlogged NHS around. Which is why Pat McFadden, the highly capable fourth member of the governing “quad” of ministers (with Starmer, Reeves and Angela Rayner), is top of the lists.
But the lists are redundant. It would be disastrous for Starmer to dispense with his chancellor. It would in effect be a vote of no confidence in himself. It would be an attempt to write off the first six months of this government – but instead of starting again with a clean sheet, it would simply deepen the crisis and lead to pressure to change prime minister instead.
It was embarrassing enough to have the prime minister corrected by his spokesperson at the journalists’ briefing on Monday afternoon to say: “He will be working with her in her role as chancellor for the whole of this parliament.”
That was the answer Starmer should have given that morning. No one cares that he is “guaranteeing” that Reeves will keep her job. If she does move in a year’s time, say, what are people going to say? “But you promised she wouldn’t”?
I did wonder if Starmer avoided an emphatic answer because he knows she wants to give up the job, but even if so, he should express eternal confidence, and if she does want out, she would be most unlikely to go for a while yet.
One thing we can be sure of is that it would be disastrous for Starmer to sack her now, just because the gilts market has had a bad week. No one in the government is proposing a substantially different policy. People disagree with the details, but the broad themes of restoring sustainable public finances and increasing spending on key public services, which require substantial tax rises, are right. Reeves must stay and fight.
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