Gone are the days when new employees would be sent for a tin of tartan paint, a long weight, or other jokey requests.
In certain trades, however, there are still induction processes to go through, tests that have to be passed. For new party leaders these include the acceptance speech to the party faithful, the first Prime Minister’s Questions, and the first major broadcast interview.
Kemi Badenoch, the new leader of the Conservative Party, did the first on that list on Saturday and will do the second on Wednesday. The third took place on BBC1’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. So how did the heir to Thatcher, Major, Hague, Cameron, et al fare? Well, it was different.
Before Badenoch could have her moment, the Chancellor wanted another go at selling her Budget. If the government spends as much time briefing after the Budget as they did before it, Ms Reeves could still be at this task come Christmas.
It is all in a good cause though as far as Reeves is concerned. The markets, being more caught up in what is happening in the US this week, have so far not taken fright at her sums the way they did with Liz Truss’s, and the government wants to keep it that way. If that means getting up even earlier to do Sky News’ Sunday with Trevor Phillips, then so be it.
Viewers who did the same would have been rewarded by witnessing that rare thing - a politician saying they were wrong. It happened like this. Phillips played a clip of Reeves saying there would be no tax rises if Labour won the election. “I was wrong,” she told Phillips. The host looked taken aback for a moment. Had the Chancellor really just said those three little words?
Reeves was quick to get back on script. She was wrong because the figures had been wrong, the Tories had left a black hole in the nation’s finances and kept it quiet. “There was a massive cover-up,” she said.
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While the black hole line was not new, Reeves saying “I was wrong” in such stark terms will be worth a headline or two.
She did not repeat the answer exactly on Kuenssberg’s show, which suggests the Chancellor had a rethink in the car from Sky News to the BBC.
Otherwise, it was business as usual from Ms Reeves. Kuenssberg had a little something extra of her own to bring to the party, a short “behind the scenes” film of the Chancellor doing the post-Budget rounds. We watched her enter the Treasury to a round of applause from staff. Next she was donning a lab coat on a visit to a high tech firm. White lab coat, white heat.
The Budget had turned out to be a family occasion, she told Kuenssberg. Beside the Chancellor on the front bench was her sister, Ellie, and in the gallery were her mum and stepfather. Mum was very proud of her daughter being the first woman Chancellor, but she wasn’t happy about the “barracking” from the Conservative benches. And who should be among those criticising the Chancellor’s choices? Why, none other than the former Trade Secretary, one Kemi Badenoch. This would be her first run-in with the Reeves women. It would not be her last.
In her acceptance speech on Saturday, the new Conservative leader said she would tell “hard truths” to both the country and her party. The Conservatives had to be “honest” about the mistakes they made in government, she added.
Kuenssberg took that as her cue. What went wrong with Boris Johnson, she asked.
“I thought he was a great Prime Minister but there were some serious issues that needed to be resolved,” said Ms Badenoch.
Like Partygate, for instance? No. Ms Badenoch thought that had been “overblown”. Nor was she going to be critical about Liz Truss or any other ex-leader. “We can have a post-mortem but I don’t think that’s helpful to your viewers,” she said.
You might think the viewers would be the judge of that, but once again the Tory leader was not for budging. When Kuenssberg asked if she would vote against the Budget, Ms Badenoch said that was “neither here nor there”.
Ms Badenoch has her own style with interviews. She does not shy away from taking bold positions and is extremely confident when defending them. It was this that got her into trouble at the party conference when she said maternity pay was “excessive”. Little wonder that among those welcoming Ms Badenoch to her new job are sketchwriters, cartoonists and journalists in general. Ms Badenoch, as they say in the trade, is “box office”, always good for a story.
Her first major interview since winning the leadership lived up to expectations. Not only did she criticise the Chancellor’s Budget, she was also unimpressed by Reeves staking a place in history.
“I find it astonishing that Rachel Reeves keeps talking about how she’s the first female Chancellor, which in my view is a very, very, low glass ceiling within the Labour Party which she may have smashed, nowhere near as significant as what other women in this country have achieved.”
Had Reeves still been there she would have pointed out she’s a bit more than the first female Labour Chancellor, important as that is. She’s the first woman Chancellor since the job was created 800 years ago.
Labour had to respond to Badenoch’s interview, and guess who was on Sunday duty? A Reeves woman. Not Rachel, not mum, but sister Ellie, aka the Labour Party chairwoman.
She said: “Listening to Kemi Badenoch dismiss Partygate as ‘overblown’ will add insult to injury for families across Britain who followed the rules, missing loved ones’ deaths and family funerals, whilst her colleagues partied in Downing Street.
“Kemi Badenoch must explain where the cuts to state schools will bite after promising unfunded tax breaks for private schools – no wonder she refused to condemn Liz Truss whose mini budget crashed the economy.
“The leader may have changed but on her first day in the job Kemi Badenoch has proved three times that the Tories haven’t listened and they haven’t learnt.”
One lesson the new Tory leader might have learned is not to mess with the Reeves women if you want a quiet life in politics. Something tells me, however, that is the last thing Ms Badenoch wants.
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