Focus on the Budget, Rachel, not your newspaper critics

Rachel Reeves is rightly proud of being the first female chancellor of the Exchequer, and often speaks of being underestimated and having to prove herself to those “boys who write newspaper columns”.

- JOHN RENTOUL

But she has proven herself now – so it strikes an odd note for her to accuse her critics of “mansplaining”, as if it is only male commentators who disagree with some of her policies.

What people want to hear on the eve of a controversial Budget is why she is making the decisions she is, rather than complaints about how the world is unfair to her. That is why her outburst - in a sympathetic profile of her in The Times by Tom Baldwin, a Labour loyalist who has also written a positive biography of Keir Starmer - was unwise.

“I’m sick of people mansplaining how to be chancellor to me,” she said to Baldwin, “with some force”. It sounded like a complaint, even though in another part of the interview she said: “Nobody really wants to hear me complaining about stuff. What they want to know is, how are you going to play the cards you’ve been dealt?”