Had she lied? Had she lied? Eventually, half-heartedly, with a shrug, she said had not.
A bruised, stale, defensive Rachel Reeves cut a sad figure on Sunday-morning television. It was not easy to watch. A boxing referee might have stepped in to put the Chancellor out of her misery.
An arm round her shoulder. A gentle steer towards her corner men, barely visible through those swelling eyes. ‘You gave it your best, buster, now let’s get that nasty bump on your head seen to, shall we?’
Sky News’s Trevor Phillips sat back in his seat, almost jaunty, scoffing at her reluctance to admit that she had not lied. Her vowels were being stretched like chewing gum. Her jaw rotated as she flailed for words.
Half an hour later the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, a little more courteous, put a series of courtroom challenges. ‘Do you want people to trust you?… That was not entirely true, was it?… I’m asking you to address this question directly.’ And still they came: ‘It wasn’t true to say that, was it? Was it a lie? You misled people, did you not? Was it a lie?’
Lie, lie, lie, lie. That one word kept echoing round the cavern of her brain.
Towards the end of the Kuenssberg interview, Ms Reeves managed to get a little on to the front foot, talking about child poverty. But it was too late and it felt desperate. She was wriggling. Raving. Repeating herself about how she was giving people £150 off their heating bills.
Given most people’s tax rises, that will be gone in a puff.
At the start of the BBC show the Chancellor was shown sitting directly opposite the Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who had given her such a tremendous biffing in the Commons last Wednesday. Mrs B cut a cheery figure, beaming directly ahead. Ms Reeves threw her gaze curtly to the right, so as to avoid her tormentor. The psychology of that little relationship has become fraught. A Corryvreckan whirlpool of flinches and dreads.
Later, when Ms Reeves was asked about the brutal Badenoch speech, her mouth sagged and she essayed indifference. ‘I have always tried to focus on the policies,’ she mumbled. Mrs Badenoch was having none of it. When Laura K pressed her about it in the next segment of the programme, she retorted crisply: ‘I remember last year when Rachel Reeves took a swipe at me. I remember when they were calling Rishi Sunak a liar and calling Liz Truss a lettuce. They like to dish it out, not take it.’
By this time Ms Reeves had been led from the studio. Led away by her trainers, a blood-soaked hanky held to her pulverised conk.
Did we learn much? Well, she admitted that she was raising people’s taxes. ‘Asking people to pay a li’l bi’ more,’ was her formulation. The don’t-look-at-me-guv glottal stopping made the euphemism only more irritating. And she kept drawing Sir Keir’s name into the discussion. ‘Keir’. To show how close they were. Yes, he had known everything. Complicit! The PM and his chief of staff, chief poisoner Morgan McSweeney, will be delighted.
She insisted that she was ‘proud’ of the Budget. Indeed, she was ‘proud’ six times, which was almost as many times as she mentioned that £150 handout for fuel bills.
She claimed that the rise in gambling taxes, plus fresh moves against tax evasion, would cover the cost of her higher welfare spending. Believe that if you wish. ‘I was clear,’ she droned. ‘I was clear. I was clear.’
Kuenssberg suggested she was hiding behind ‘the small print’. This was denied, but without much fight. The mood was one of exhaustion, decay, a stale going-through-the-motions.
The Duracell bunny was nearing the end of its battery life. ‘I was really cleeaa…’ And then it stops, one drum stick frozen just short of its target.
As a parting remark, she whimpered, ‘I have been underestimated all my life’. Overestimated, more like.
A sorry business.
