Keir Starmer speaks out on Rachel Reeves' tears in the House of Commons
The Prime Minister spoke about Chancellor Rachel Reeves' emotions during PMQs
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves during a visit to Horiba Mira in Nuneaton
(Image: 2025 Getty Images )
Sir Keir Starmer has defended Chancellor Rachel Reeves after she was seen wiping away tears beside him during Prime Minister's Questions. Her emotional appearance in the Commons yesterday prompted speculation, but Starmer dismissed any political link.
He told the BBC it was 'absolutely wrong' to suggest her reaction was connected to Labour's recent welfare policy U-turn. Starmer emphasised that the matter was personal, not political, and urged people not to draw conclusions from a moment of visible emotion in public.
'It's a personal matter for her,' he said, adding that people can be caught off guard by emotion, even in public life. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here
Asked by Chris Evans how the Chancellor is, he said: "She's fine. She's very resilient and strong is Rachel.
"She's driven through lots of change in the Labour Party.
"We had to change the Labour Party, we fought an election together and I've seen her resilience."
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He went on: "She's a really powerful woman, and she's also very widely respected.
"And I think the sort of messages of concern that have come in over the last 24 hours or so show the great affection and respect in which she is held."
Rachel Reeves was seen crying during PMQs
(Image: Parliament Live )
Her spokesperson also issued a short statement clarifying that her emotional response had no connection to the government's recent U-turn on disability benefits.
The reversal, involving planned changes to Personal Independence Payments, came amid growing concern within Labour ranks.
Today, Reeves is expected to make a brief public appearance before Starmer's major speech on the NHS.
Speaking to Virgin Radio this morning, the PM reiterated that her tears were 'purely personal' and not tied to her work or party tensions.
He said they had spoken at length on Wednesday evening, and reassured the public that she was "doing fine."
Starmer added: "But we are humans in the end and sometimes personal things are obviously on our minds and, in this case, that was the situation."
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The Guardian
17 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Rachel Reeves says she cannot rule out autumn tax rises after ‘damaging' week
Rachel Reeves has said it is impossible for her to rule out tax rises in the autumn budget and insisted she never thought about quitting despite a turbulent week for her and the government. In an interview with the Guardian, the chancellor said 'there are costs' to the watering down of the welfare bill and acknowledged it had been a 'damaging' week for Downing Street. The chancellor's tears in the Commons on Wednesday spooked the financial markets and raised questions about her future in the job, but No 10 quickly weighed in behind her, saying she and the prime minister were in lockstep. Reeves said she had never considered resigning her position, despite being the focus of some Labour backbench anger over her handling of the economy, saying: 'I didn't work that hard to then quit.' She said she regretted going into prime minister's questions in tears after a 'tough day in the office' but hoped that people 'could relate' to her distress. 'It was a personal matter but it was in the glare of the camera. And that's unfortunate, but I think people have seen that I'm back in business and back out there,' she said. 'I went to prime minister's questions because I thought that was the right thing to do, because that's where I always am at lunchtime on a Wednesday. You know, in retrospect, I probably wished I hadn't gone in … [on] a tough day in the office. But, you know, it is what it is. But I think most people can relate to that – that they've had tough days.' Her challenging moment in parliament came in the same week that a backbench rebellion forced the government to drop key welfare cuts, which leaves Reeves with a £5bn black hole to fill in the country's finances. 'It's been damaging,' she admitted. 'I'm not going to deny that, but I think where we are now, with a review led by Stephen Timms [a work and pensions minister], who is obviously incredibly respected and has a huge amount of experience, that's the route we're taking now. 'That's the right thing to do. It is important that we listen in government, that we listen to our colleagues and listen to what groups outside are saying as well.' Timms is working with disability groups to reform the personal independent payments (Pip) system, which had been the target of government cuts until the huge backbench rebellion drove the government to drop them. Reeves said the government had learned lessons about bringing MPs and the country along with them in the run-up to what is widely expected to be a difficult budget this autumn ahead. 'As we move into the budget for the autumn, I do want to bring people into those trade-offs,' she said. Asked whether she was prepared to rule out tax rises, she said: 'I'm not going to, because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that. We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement. So we'll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.' While tax rises could be on the table, Reeves signalled that her fiscal rules would remain and that 'we'll continue to keep that grip on the public finances'. But she stressed the need to accompany this with a strong explanation of how the Treasury's choices fit with Labour values. 'I'm not going to apologise for making sure the numbers add up,' she said. 'But we do need to make sure that we're telling a story, and a Labour story. We did that well in the budget and the spending review, we increased taxes on the wealthiest and businesses. In the budget last year, I made it really clear that priorities in that budget were to protect working people, to invest in the NHS and to start rebuilding Britain.' Some within government and the Labour party have been pushing for either a reconsideration of the fiscal rules or rethinking the remit of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which produces two forecasts and rulings a year on whether the rules have been met. Asked whether she would consider one forecast instead of two, Reeves said: 'We are looking at how the OBR works, but I think it is really important to have those independent economic institutions, because if you start undermining those … and getting rid of the checks and balances on a government, I do think that is risky. But the International Monetary Fund have made some recommendations about how to deliver better fiscal policymaking. And obviously I take those seriously.' The IMF has suggested that while the OBR could still produce two forecasts, it could be possible to only have one annual assessment of whether the chancellor is hitting her fiscal rules. However, government sources suggested that any changes could be more along the lines of more regular exchange of information to reduce last-minute changes like those in the spring statement. Reeves also spoke of her drive to reduce child poverty but she would not be drawn on whether she would lift the two-child benefit cap. Keir Starmer has said the government 'will look at it' but experts have warned it could be more difficult given the hole left by the U-turn on the welfare cuts. The chancellor said she wanted to reduce child poverty but was 'not wedded to any specific policy', adding: 'I think people can see how serious I am about making sure that all good kids get a good start in life by what we did in the spending review just a few weeks ago.'
The Guardian
20 minutes ago
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Who's really to blame for Labour's troubles – Rachel Reeves or the invisible PM?
She is not the first chancellor to cry in public, and may not be the last. But Rachel Reeves is the first whose tears have moved markets. No sooner had the realisation dawned that she was silently weeping – over a personal sorrow she won't be pushed into revealing, she insisted later, not a political one – as she sat beside Keir Starmer at Wednesday's prime minister's questions, than the pound was dropping and the cost of borrowing rising. The bond traders who forced out Liz Truss's hapless chancellor still clearly rate her judgment and want her to stay, even if (perhaps especially if) some Labour MPs don't. Yet it is an extraordinary thing to live with the knowledge that a moment's uncontrolled emotion can drive up the cost of a nation's mortgages, just as a misjudged stroke of the budget pen can destroy lives. The most striking thing about her tears, however, was Starmer's failure to notice. Intent on the Tory benches opposite, the prime minister simply ploughed on, not realising that his closest political ally was dissolving beside him. Though within hours, a clearly mortified Starmer had thrown a metaphorical arm around her, and Reeves herself was back out talking up her beloved fiscal rules as if nothing had happened. But it's the kind of image that sticks: her distress and his oblivion, an unfortunately convenient metaphor for all the times he has seemed oddly detached from his own government. Quite aside from whatever private grief she is now carrying, Reeves has for years been shouldering an exhausting load. From the start, she and Morgan McSweeney, Starmer's chief of staff, did an unusual amount of the heavy lifting on behalf of their oddly apolitical leader – and in government the stakes have only risen. McSweeney, a natural fixer now jammed faintly awkwardly into a strategist's role, was once credited with near-mythical influence over Starmer, but for months is said to have been struggling at times to get the boss's ear. Reeves, meanwhile, has ended up by default running much of the domestic agenda, while Starmer focuses on foreign policy crises and a handful of big issues that passionately exercise him. Since even close aides and ministers complain of never really knowing what he wants, the result is a Treasury-brained government that tends to start with the numbers and work back to what's possible, rather than setting a political goal and figuring out how to reach it. Perhaps that makes sense to the City, but not to Labour MPs frogmarched through a series of politically toxic decisions with no obvious rationale except that the money's got to come from somewhere. To many of them, Starmer appears at best like a kind of political weekend dad: largely absent from everyday life and reluctant to get involved in political battles, but swooping in at the last minute to issue orders. Complaints of Downing Street dysfunction have been a staple under at least the last four prime ministers, but there's a weakness at the core of this No 10 that is putting the rest of government under undue strain, like a runner trying to push on through an injury who ends up pulling every other muscle in the process. On the left, there is growing talk of trying to force a 'reset' in spring, if next year's Scottish and Welsh elections go as badly as they assume: force Reeves out, let radicalism in, fight Reform's emotive rightwing fire with a form of leftwing populism perhaps loosely resembling what the Democrats' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or the New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani are doing in the US. It's exactly what the markets fear, judging by their reaction to Reeves' temporary wobble. But even Labour MPs who'd never go that far are growing restless for change. Just raise taxes, cries this week's New Statesman magazine, echoing a widespread view that the fiscal straitjacket imposed by Reeves is killing the government. I argued for the same thing in the Guardian back in March, and haven't changed my mind. But the political cost of doing so is arguably higher now than it would have been then, when tax rises could plausibly still have been framed as an emergency response to Donald Trump pulling the plug on Europe's defence and forcing Britain to rearm, rather than as an admission that the government can no longer get its spending plans past its own backbenchers. In their understandable frustration, however, some fail to ask why Reeves holds the iron grip she does; why Treasury thinking isn't more often challenged by No 10. If this government's mistakes often have her fingerprints somewhere on them, then so do many of its successes. Last week, I was at a housing conference, surrounded by people still euphoric at getting everything they asked for in last month's spending review: unprecedented billions poured into genuinely affordable and social housing – with emphasis thankfully for once on the social – with a 10-year settlement from the Treasury, creating the long-term certainty they need to make it happen. Angela Rayner fought like a tiger for it, but Reeves made the money happen, and the result will change lives. Children who would have grown up in grim, frightening temporary accommodation will have safe, permanent homes. Vulnerable people will escape the clutches of unscrupulous landlords and first-time buyers will climb ladders otherwise out of reach. It's everything a Labour government exists to do, but as with so many unseen good things happening – on green energy, say, or transport – the money didn't fall from the sky and won't be there in future if an ageing and chronically unfit population carries on consuming welfare spending or health spending (the next big battleground, judging by the detail of Wes Streeting's 10-year plan) at current rates. To a frustrated Treasury, this week's rebellion was evidence that Labour MPs don't live in the real world, where hard choices must be faced for good things to happen. But, to the rebels, it's evidence that the Treasury doesn't live in their real world, where vulnerable people struggle with deep-rooted health problems only aggravated by being pushed into poverty, and the Greens as much as Reform are threatening to eat them for breakfast over it. There is some truth in both arguments. But that's precisely why it is ultimately a prime minister's job, and nobody else's, to draw all the threads of the government together: to balance political yin against economic yang, such that neither dominates or bends the project out of shape. Chancellors come and, eventually, even the best go. But sometimes it's only then that you can really tell whether the problem was ever really the chancellor. Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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41 minutes ago
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British beach horror as sunbathers scream in terror after terrifying 'bug swarm'
Crowds of beachgoers were captured screaming and running into the sea in a bid to escape the sudden insect invasion - with one claiming 'millions' of critters were 'all over us' A Blackpool beachgoer has told of sheer horror on the coast, claiming "everyone was attacked" during a trip to the seaside. Posting on TikTok, user Shab uploaded alarming footage of the chaotic scene, which showed dozens of people shrieking and fleeing in panic. "Everyone was attacked by flies in Blackpool, it was horrible," she wrote in a caption, before adding: "Millions of them [were] in the water and all over us." Her video also captured crowds running into the sea in a bid to escape the sudden insect invasion, as she declared: "There are swarms of bugs everywhere." The bizarre swarm echoes a similar event in 2022, when holidaymakers described a "biblical" plague of bugs in the same area, as reported by North Wales Live. Just last Easter, beaches including Blackpool North and nearby St Annes North were also flagged as two of 22 coastal UK spots where bathers were advised to avoid entering the water due to pollution concerns linked to sewage. The disturbing trend has since drawn criticism from local MP Chris Webb, who responded by saying: "It is shocking that the Conservative government yet again have allowed Blackpool beach to be hit by an avalanche of raw sewage over the Easter weekend. Blackpool Beach is a much-loved location for locals and holidaymakers and unbeknownst to those using the beach, their health has been put at risk because of the government's failure to act." Mr Webb added: "It should be the polluter, not the public or businesses paying the price. From day one, a Labour Government will take urgent action against water companies to bring an end to illegal sewage dumping, putting the public's health first." TikTok users responding to Shabs' video are highlighting the same problem, claiming sewage is rife on Blackpool's beach. One theorised: "Raw sewage [is] what you're walking in, my son caught dysentery from just paddling years ago at Blackpool." A second person claimed: "The water in Blackpool is so filthy with waste in it, I seen a bird drop its poop in the water and people were rubbing their faces with that same water." And a third added: "Its been on the news and reported [that] Blackpool water has sewage in it and to avoid it etc... I wouldn't dare step foot in that water." Despite people's speculation, there is no solid evidence the flies have been linked to sewage in the water. Many pointed out the "attack" could purely be a result of the common sandfly being in the area. One TikTok user noted: "Sandfly swarms are a recurring, natural phenomenon which can affect any UK beach. It has nothing to do with the state of the beach or if you believe the water is dirty. The state of the beach is down to visitors who constantly fail to clean up after themselves, not the locals." And a second concurred, commenting: "Sandflies, they're rife when the air show is on. We went a couple of years ago and it felt like the plague was back with a vengeance." A senior resident added: "I remember this happening to me and my family 65 years ago in Blackpool. Same beach. The flies came off the sand and my ice cream cone suddenly turned black. We all ran into a large seafront store. I was five or six-years old." Samples of water taken by the Environment Agency on Blackpool North beach in 2022, 2023 and 2024 were all deemed "poor" in their classification. The results of a sample taken on June 20, 2025 are yet to be finalised and published. John Blackledge, Blackpool Council Director of Community and Environmental Services, said: "It is unclear in the brief clip what wildlife may have been present at that time in what is a natural coastal environment. "We are proud of our beaches which so many people love and visit. In May of this year, Blackpool South, Blackpool Central, and Bispham beaches were recognised in the National Seaside Awards for their high standards of beach management, as well as their nearby facilities and water quality. "These prestigious awards are delivered through Keep Britain Tidy a leading environmental agency and testing of waters is carried out by the Environment Agency. The awards celebrate the quality of England's coastline including Blackpool's beaches and waters and are a symbol that visitors can find a clean, safe and well-managed coastal stretch."
