Keir Starmer says Rachel Reeves will be Chancellor ‘for years’
Keir Starmer has said he and Rachel Reeves are in “lockstep” as he praised the “excellent job” she is doing as Chancellor after she was tearful during PMQs.
The Prime Minister said she will be Chancellor for “many years to come” after earlier swerving a question on her future in the Commons.
In his first words since Ms Reeves’s tearful appearance this afternoon, Mr Starmer told the BBC: “She’s done an excellent job as Chancellor and we have delivered inward investment to this country in record numbers.
“She and I work together, we think together. In the past there have been examples – I won’t give any specifics – of chancellors and prime ministers who weren’t in lockstep. We’re in lockstep.”
The PM said Ms Reeves’s tears were to do with a personal matter, on which he would not elaborate. He said it had “nothing to do with politics” or this week’s dramatic welfare U-turns.
Pressed on whether it was, Mr Starmer said: “That’s absolutely wrong. Nothing to do with what’s happened this week. It was a personal matter for her, I’m not going to intrude on her privacy by talking to you.”
This afternoon, Ms Reeves wiped away tears during a tense PMQs, where Mr Starmer came under attack from Tory Kemi Badenoch over his disability cuts U-turn. The Prime Minister did not properly answer a question on his Chancellor’s future during the clash as Ms Badenoch crowed “she looks absolutely miserable”.
No10 moved swiftly to insist she was “going nowhere” and had the PM’s full confidence for the rest of the Parliament after PMQs. And a spokesman for the Chancellor added: “It’s a personal matter, which – as you would expect – we are not going to get into. The Chancellor will be working out of Downing Street this afternoon.”
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