The position of Rachel Reeves, Britain’s most senior finance official, was the subject of growing speculation on Wednesday after she appeared visibly upset in Parliament as Prime Minister Keir Starmer declined to guarantee that she would keep her job.
Mr. Starmer had previously committed to keeping Ms. Reeves in her role as chancellor of the Exchequer until the next general election, but when he was asked on Wednesday by Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition, to repeat that pledge, he avoided the question.
However later on Wednesday, the prime minister’s office expressed support for Ms. Reeves, saying that she was “going nowhere.”
Ms. Reeves became chancellor last year amid high expectations. She was the first woman to hold the position among Britain’s great offices of state. She emphasized her credentials from previously working at the Bank of England and vowed to restore fiscal credibility to Britain after it was shaken by the tax and spending plans of the former prime minister Liz Truss.
But she has faced growing criticism from some within the governing Labour Party because of her efforts to use savings from social welfare to stabilize the government’s difficult public finances.
The exchange on Wednesday came after a fraught battle over government plans for changes to the social welfare system. On Tuesday the government won a vote on its legislation but suffered a significant rebellion from 49 of its own lawmakers even after making a series of concessions that critics claimed had gutted the bill.
Those concessions wiped out much of the £5 billion ($6.8 billion) the chancellor had hoped to save.
Ms. Reeves has committed herself to strict fiscal discipline, promising to balance the government’s day-to-day budget in just a few years. That has forced her to quickly look for big savings in spending to avoid repeatedly raising taxes.
Some have criticized her for putting these fiscal constraints above the Labour Party’s center-left values. The government recently reversed parts of a decision to remove financial support for retirees paying their energy bills, after a backlash within the party.
During a heated session of prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, cameras caught images of a tearful Ms. Reeves as she sat next to Mr. Starmer.
The Treasury declined to explain whether the display of emotions was related to the welfare debacle, Mr. Starmer’s comments or another issue altogether.
“It’s a personal matter, which — as you would expect — we are not going to get into. The chancellor will be working out of Downing Street this afternoon,” it said in a statement.
Since taking office, Ms. Reeves has said she needed to make “difficult” choices to improve the nation’s public finances, which have been strained by high debt levels, high taxes and stretched public services. But before the general election, Ms. Reeves ruled out raising taxes on “working people,” effectively eliminating increasing taxes on the main revenue generators for the government. That has left her with little room to maneuver financially.
In recent months, President Trump’s rewriting of the global trade system and the escalating conflicts in the Middle East have also complicated the economic backdrop for the chancellor.
While she can’t control these global events, Ms. Reeves does face a tightly balanced fiscal picture that can be easily disrupted. Small changes to the economic outlook for Britain, whether in the form of downgrades in economic growth projections or forecasts of higher inflation, have quickly eaten away at any buffer Ms. Reeves had left in her tax and spending plans.
Stephen Castle is a London correspondent of The Times, writing widely about Britain, its politics and the country’s relationship with Europe.
Eshe Nelson is a Times reporter based in London, covering economics and business news.
The post U.K. Chancellor in Tears in Parliament as Questions Are Raised About Her Role appeared first on New York Times.
