There is a pleasing synchronicity that Oxford announced its word of the year is “rage-bait”. After a weekend of splenetic fury over the Chancellor’s statements in the run-up to the Budget, which have been revealed to be, if not lies exactly, then certainly economical with the actualité.
One might expect her opponents at the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph to call for her head; but even such previously friendly journalists as Robert Peston have got in on the act, describing her excuse as “totally inconsistent” with what she knew. Following on from Beth Rigby—who appears (to me at least) to inhabit a similar place on the spectrum—telling Keir Starmer, “You promised to end the chaos. You are the chaos!”, one gets the sense that the worm has turned. The dam has broken. Or whatever similar metaphor you choose.
There is, perhaps, a similarity with the end of Joe Biden’s Presidential run last year. Friendly journalists were adamant that Sleepy Joe was actually wide awake—vigorous, even. Until the Presidential debate not only revealed him to be asleep, but perhaps heavily medicated. One journalist defected. Then another. Then the entire press-pack decided he was unfit to be President. And that was that.
Screeching U-turns demand an explanation, even when committed by the press; and, as the days passed, psychologists introduced the concept of “pluralistic ignorance” to the public discourse. When people have an opinion which is outside what they perceive the consensus to be, they generally keep it to themselves. It is only when they think most people agree with them that they put their hands up. Individuals may have doubted Biden’s fitness; but, because saying so was off-limits in polite society until his debate performance rendered doubt impossible, no one wanted to voice them.
With an understandable desire to turn academic jargon into a more user-friendly format, the phenomenon was dubbed the Emperor’s New Clothes effect. Everyone in the crowd knows that His Majesty is displaying both of the sceptres in his possession, but no one mentions the fact until the small boy decides to mention it—at which point everybody does. Out of the mouths of babes…
The story ends with the Emperor having to style it out. Which is unfortunate. For what happens after he gets back to the Palace? Presumably the first step is to put on some clothes. But what then? Does he go off on one at the people who put him in that position? And what about the courtiers? Do they feel the merest soupçon of embarrassment that they did not have the courage to speak up? What about the crowd? They played along when it was clear to all what was happening. What could be more humiliating than to have gone along with a transparent lie because one lacked the courage to dissent? Would they not have to confront the fact that they had behaved in the way they tell themselves only other people do?
Ms Reeves has not yet appeared naked in the chamber (the mother of all dead cats, if it were to happen), but neither has she provided much evidence that she is professionally fully dressed. Yes, she worked at the Bank of England. But as a graduate trainee. She wasn’t a director, let alone a member of the Monetary Policy Committee. If she ever went to the Governor’s palatial office, it would have been as the sort of staff member who wasn’t expected to speak until the end of the meeting—if at all. If we wouldn’t take having been a bobby on the beat as evidence someone was the Platonic Ideal of the Home Secretary, or we wouldn’t say that having been the second unit Assistant Director on a film made one a perfect Culture Secretary, why did so many take Ms Reeves’s experience as sufficient to be Chancellor?
Nor, to be indelicate, has her performance in public life given us much reason to consider her personal probity to be unimpeachable. There was the issue with her CV (an admin error committed by her staff, she claimed); there was the plagiarism in the book (an admin error committed by her researchers, she claimed); there has been the recent issue over renting out her house (an admin error committed by her husband and estate agent, she claimed). Ms Reeves may have been unlucky (some people are), but given her history, misleading the public—possibly Parliament and, it is reported, her cabinet colleagues—is not the sort of thing we could definitively rule out of character.
And yet, despite all this, the press is currently giving Ms Reeves and her boss the Captain Renault treatment, telling everyone who cares to listen that they are shocked—shocked—by the Budget process and its fallout. Should they be? Or was Ms Reeves, like the Emperor, always en déshabillée, and like the crowd they just chose not to notice until they could no longer avoid it?
One can cut the media some slack. Ms Reeves comes from the same class as many of those covering her; journalism having transformed itself from a trade into a profession, most people believe the world would be better if it were run by People Like Them. As politicians have learned that they can ignore unfriendly outlets, searching critiques are unlikely to win the writer a question at a press conference, or a juicy off-the-record titbit. But one cannot be honest and impartial only over the long run. It is not the sort of thing one can tend towards. One slip and it is gone.
One can cut Ms Reeves some slack. She is who she is: a woman in a job for which she has given no particular sign of suitability and an unfortunate habit of being in the vicinity of dubious behaviour which happens to make her life easier. Her sin is that she is not who we may assume she told herself she was, nor who the media told themselves and their readers she was. And for that she must be punished.
The look of icy dread she now wears like a Covid mask suggests she is currently doing her bit. The fury of the kicking she and her boss are receiving in the media suggests they are not; the original sentence being increased by the aggravating factor of having failed to conform to the journalists’ narrative—of having made them look stupid. For if she has no one to blame but herself, the press still has her, and that is far too good an opportunity to pass up.
Harsh questions to a politician deflect from harsh questions to journalists—why didn’t you see this coming? Twelve months ago you were telling us she was the second coming? Harsh questions to a politician deflect from harsh questions to oneself—what did I miss? How did I not notice? Am I a fool? Harsh questions to a naked Emperor mean not having to look in the mirror and notice one is in one’s birthday suit.
For, like all of us, Britain’s journalists think they are wearing the latest finery but in reality are parading around buck naked. And like all of us, they hate it when the small boy of reality points this out. We all want to live in fairy stories—the ones we write for ourselves.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.
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And she, plus her inept boss, will continue to get away with it whilst buying off the scroungers and Moslems and the thick as mince chattering classes still harp on about Truss.
An outstanding commentary from Stewart Slater – Brilliant analysis of the behaviour of politicians, media and journalists.
I “got” it despite the fact, shock horror, what I’ve spent the best part of the last week or more in bed with some kind of novel virus (!) or whatever. I favour “whatever”! And so I actually missed all the budget hoo-ha, before, during and most of after. Only catching up now.
Bravo, though, to Stewart – an excellent article to kick start my research.
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