Enda Brady: UK correspondent on Keir Starmer backing Rachel Reeves to remain chancellor after her tears in Parliament

Prime Minister Keir Starmer backed Rachel Reeves to remain chancellor "into the next election and for many years after" after she was seen crying in the Commons yesterday.

Starmer had initially refused to say whether Reeves would remain in her job until the next election.

UK correspondent Enda Brady says the party's had a 'rocky' week - and they've faced a lot of scrutiny. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Into Brady Are UK correspondence with us Hello, Li.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Dah, Hey Heather, how are you.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm well? Thank you? So she gets so Rachel Reeves.
Despite the fact that the Prime Minister was not giving
express and confidence in her in the House, he has
now subsequently said she will keep her job.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Right. Yes, he's come out in an interview. It's going
to be broadcast tomorrow to mark one year of Starmer
in power, and apparently it's all over the radio this morning.
Here he has said she will remain his chancellor for
this term and if they win the next election, she
will still be Chancellor by his side. So she is
the most important person in the UK government after the

(00:38):
Prime Minister, and a lot of people speculating that the
reason she was crying is that Kier Starmer is about
the sacker. He has come out now and made it
clear he is not getting rid of Rachel Reeves.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Did you interpret what he said in the House as
not express in confidence in her?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
No, not at all. Look, they've had a rocky week
and a lot of the newspapers, completely conservative right wing newspapers,
have been ripping into Starmer over the climbdown on the
welfare reforms. They've now got a black hole in the
public finances. What he should have said yesterday was the
reason there's a black hole to begin with is because
of the incompetence of the previous shower. He didn't say that,

(01:19):
and I think a lot of people were reading into
it that this is him kind of passing the book
on to her for all of the problems they've had
this week. But clearly from what we're hearing in Westminster,
there is an issue in her private life and that
will remain private. But it all got a bit too
much for Rachel Reeves yesterday and she cracked.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
How bad did you feel for her? Trying so hard
not to cry and completely unable to stop herself.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
I felt very sorry for her, and I think politics
is a brutal business. It can be very lonely. And
she's sitting there. This is all on all the news
channels every Wednesday. Prime Minister's Questions a streamed live. Everyone's
watching it. I genuinely felt very very for her, because
you can't get up and leave, you're in Parliament. It's
live on TV, and she sat there and you know

(02:06):
all the people gloating online. I think it's a tough gig.
I think she's making brave decisions and for a woman,
I actually think she will come out of this. The
public now perhaps might have some more appreciation for how
hard she's working, the pressure she's under. And I'll tell
you what I think quite strongly about this, Rachel. The

(02:26):
nine point two million people in Britain who do not work,
are not in education, not in training, doing nothing and
spending their time on Facebook and Twitter and making her
life hell. They're the ones who should be feeling shame today,
not Rachel.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Reeves too right, too right, Get them off the couches.
And now Lucy Lippy is she going to be charged
with more offenses?

Speaker 2 (02:47):
So she's back on the front pages today. For anyone
who's not followed this, she is the baby killer nurse
convicted of murdering seven infants and the attempted murder of
seven others. She's serving fourteen whole life terms, which means
she will die in prison. She will serve every day
of her life in prison. Detectives have been looking at
her activity in other hospitals and they've now passed a

(03:10):
file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service to decide
whether or not more charges are merited. Turns out that
when she was a much younger nurse before the killings
started in twenty fifteen, she was at Liverpool Women's Hospital
and on forty percent of her shifts there were baby collapses.
So it's clear detectives have gone away and started speaking

(03:32):
to people there as well. So the file is now
at the CPS. We wait and see what they say.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Good stuff and that really appreciate it. Look after yourself Mite.
That's into Brady, UK correspondent.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
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