Rachel Reeves. What a revelation is power. Since her appointment, the new Chancellor in the full flush of office has developed a quality few of us had suspected – and she achieved, in her first departmental questions, a result none of us anticipated. She made us remember, and with fondness, the last Labour Chancellor – the lightness of touch of Gordon Brown, his gentle ironies, his ecumenical, generosity, his languid demeanour and whimsical manner at the despatch box.
What an hour and a quarter of the new Chancellor it was. Words fail us. They rather failed her, too.
Many questions were asked, and many concerned the winter fuel payment of £200 she was now means-testing. To such concerns she answered in her terrible Tannoy system of a voice, “Black hole.”
Asked what other options she had considered, she tannoyed, “Black hole, black hole.”
Alerted to the 21,000 shivering constituents of North Shropshire “worried sick about winter” she modulated her reply with, “Blacketty black. Hole.”
Bill Esterson asked a question about the £22 billion black hole. The Chancellor replied, “Black hole.”
It must be true that the First Rule of Holes applies to black holes, so it’s odd she has doubled the depth of hers with, as Harriet Baldwin mentioned, £9 billion worth of public sector pay deals, the funding of GB Energy and a “National Wealth Fund” (hollow laughter in the gallery).
Add to this her leader’s “social black hole”, the black hole in the Defence budget, and the flight of energy companies leaving a coal-black hole in the North Sea we are getting very close to the number of holes needed to fill the Albert Hall.
At some point, the Chancellor’s algorithm flipped and she gave us a run through the illusions and delusions that will carry us through the next five or 10 years (the Decade of Discontent, as it will be). She is going to “unlock growth” and “work with business” and “Rebuild Britain” and (personal favourite) “treat taxpayers’ money with respect”.
She is going to “deliver certainty” to industry. True, she has delivered so much certainty that Alan Mak was able to quote a 19-point collapse in economic confidence since the election.
Front bencher Nigel Hiddleston recalled the 50 occasions before the election Labour had promised “not to raise taxes on working people” and that working people had pensions. Would she therefore undertake not to raise taxes on pensions?
In reply, the Chancellor didn’t once say “Black hole!” but instead quoted Rehoboam’s inaugural address to his people of Israel: “My father chastised you with whips but I shall chastise you with scorpions!”*
It was an unusual thing to be said by a Labour Chancellor on the floor of the House, but it had the benefit at least of clarity. Raising pensions and raising the taxes on the raise will fulfil all her obligations to fiscal stability and to the truth.
She pledged that Labour would “never go down the route of Tory economic chaos”. Any reasonable observer knows there’s more than enough Labour chaos; we have barely got our hair ruffled.
There are rumours around of an accelerating drift towards the Exit as energy companies angle their strategies towards South America. Never mind blackouts, power surges and shortages – let them take their filthy fossil fuels and planet-burning profits and their genocidal tax payments – who needs them!
She has made history once as the first female Chancellor. Perhaps she will make it twice as the first female Chancellor who has to call in the IMF.
* Some dialogue has been modified for dramatic purposes.
