The video that shows Starmer has hung Reeves out to dry
A spokesperson for Rachel Reeves has already come out to say: '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.' Nevertheless, for whatever reason, it was terrible to see.
One journalist on twitter has concluded that: 'There is a shard of ice in Keir Starmer's soul'. That is a very generous interpretation of what just happened: it flatters the Prime Minister as to his essential hard-bitten and ruthless nature.
Another view is that he lacks fundamental decency. That having hung his Chancellor out to dry with policy U-turns that are entirely his own responsibility, he will not now even praise or defend her in public.
Take your pick. I've taken mine. Reeves, for all the criticism aimed at her, is an impressive and principled politician. She is not the first holder of that office to find her room for manoeuvre severely curtailed by economic circumstance. And she is not the first Chancellor to have been cut adrift by her boss next door in Downing Street.
It is difficult to see how she can now remain in that office. Her public display of grief has sent an unhelpful message to the international and domestic markets. The economy does not thrive when the Prime Minister and Chancellor are so clearly at odds.
The danger for Starmer is that if she goes, many in the parliamentary party and outside it will blame him for her departure. They will see Reeves as the victim of an inexperienced politician who arrived in the Commons five years after her and yet somehow managed to leapfrog his way to the top of the party within five years.
It was Reeves who adopted the principled position of refusing to serve on Jeremy Corbyn's front bench; it was Starmer who jumped at the chance to become shadow Brexit secretary.
All the Prime Minister had to do, when challenged by Kemi Badenoch to express his confidence in his Chancellor, was to express the view that she would be in her job a lot longer than Ms Badenoch would. But such thinking on his feet is a skill that, while essential to most senior politicians, is one that Starmer has never acquired.
Perhaps Starmer believed that the fallout from events of the last week and to his own woeful handling of the welfare Bill would be minimal; that he could march onwards, ever upwards, to greater glories. But his behaviour at the despatch box revealed a man with no sympathy or human feeling for a colleague he has himself treated badly. No one would blame her for walking away. But Keir Starmer would come to regret it.
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