RACHEL Reeves’s fortunes have gone from bad to worse – with the Chancellor getting the potentially fatal lettuce treatment.
She’s had a dreadful few days, with her critics accusing her of being missing in action amid a flurry of gloomy headlines about the tanking economy and then Keir Starmer appearing not to fully back her position during a Q&A session with journalists this week.
The Prime Minister has now given Reeves his explicit backing and insisted she will remain in post – but rumours are swirling she could be for the chop.
Yes, the PM might adopt her axe-happy spirit and just clean her out along with benefits spending.
Now Reeves has been dealt another humbling blow: being compared to a lettuce, Liz Truss-style.
The Daily Star famously compared the onetime Tory prime minister to a lettuce and did a competition to see which would last longer – Truss or an iceberg lettuce the paper bought from a supermarket.
STAR: Should we be popping out for another lettuce? #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/8zWFflsCnt
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) January 13, 2025
In the end, famously, the lettuce won it and Truss was turfed out by the Tories after just 49 days in office.
Her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng fared even worse, lasting just 38 days in No 11.
Even Labour bods’ patience with Reeves is wearing thin, with one anonymous backbencher telling the Daily Telegraph that Starmer must consider sacking her if things haven’t turned around by June.
They said: "If by June we do not see the kind of economic decisions being made which are believed to be able to drive our country forward, stabilise our economy and to protect our public services [...] then I think people will want greater scrutiny over whether or not she has got the capability to be able to secure our economy for the longer term.”
Meanwhile, Starmer has appointed a new policy chief at the Treasury, undermining Reeves’s authority in the department.
She could be replaced by either the de facto deputy prime minister Pat McFadden or Health Secretary Wes Streeting, it has been suggested.
Could a supermarket lettuce see off yet another of the country’s most senior politicians? Stranger things have happened…
