Rachel Reeves says she is ‘cracking on with the job’ after Commons tears
Rachel Reeves has said she is “cracking on with the job” of chancellor, after a very public show of unity from Keir Starmer after her visible distress in the Commons,In her first comments since her tearful appearance at Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions, Reeves said she had been upset about a personal matter, and that the only real difference to someone else having a bad day at work was that she then had to be seen on television,Reeves was speaking after she unexpectedly joined the prime minister and Wes Streeting, the health secretary, at the launch of the NHS 10-year plan at a health centre in east London, receiving hugs from both colleagues,She made a brief speech at the launch, between Streeting and Starmer, but did not mention Wednesday’s events, talking only about the fiscal foundations of the NHS plan and calling the proposals “good for the health of our nation and good for the health of our nation’s finances”,But speaking to TV reporters afterwards, Reeves said the reason for her upset was a personal issue unconnected to politics, insisting she was now fine.
“Clearly, I was upset yesterday and everyone could see that.It was a personal issue and I’m not going to go into the details of that,” she said.“My job as chancellor at 12 o’clock on a Wednesday is to be at PMQs next to the prime minister, supporting the government, and that’s what I tried to do.“I guess the thing that maybe is a bit different between my job and many of your viewers’ is that when I’m having a tough day it’s on the telly and most people don’t have to deal with that.”She rejected suggestions that her upset was connected to an interaction with Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, or with a government colleague.
“People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday,Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job,” she added,During a Q&A session with Starmer after his speech at the NHS event, a number of reporters directed questions to Reeves – but without reply,Starmer also refused to discuss what prompted Reeves’s upset,He said: “She has made clear on a number of occasions that yesterday was a personal issue, and I am certainly not going to say anything more about that.
I think it’s fantastic that she is here, and none of this would be happening if she hadn’t taken the decisions that she’s taken.”Asked if he should have noticed what was happening during PMQs and consoled the chancellor, Starmer said that was unrealistic given the format of the Commons exchanges.“I didn’t appreciate what was happening because, as you’ll probably appreciate, PMQs is pretty wired,” he said.“It goes from question to question and I am literally up, down, question, looking at who is asking me a question, thinking about my response and getting up and answering it.”He added: “It wasn’t just yesterday.
No prime minister ever has had side conversations in PMQs.It does happen in other debates when there is a bit more time, but in PMQs it is bang, bang, bang, bang.“That is what it was yesterday and therefore I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber.”Asked if Reeves had been summoned to the NHS event “to look performatively happy in front of the cameras”, Starmer said: “I don’t think that’s an accurate or fair description.” Reeves has been under intense pressure, with her task of balancing already tight public finances made even harder after the government’s concessions to Labour MPs over plans to change welfare, which have obliterated the planned-for £5bn savings a year.
Downing Street has insisted that Reeves’s position is not under any threat.Speculation that she might resign or be forced out had pushed up borrowing costs and led the pound to fall against the dollar and euro, with markets rallying after Starmer publicly backed her.The Conservatives have been unsympathetic to Reeves’s distress, with Kemi Badenoch telling Starmer at PMQs that she was “toast”, and Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, saying that if a chief executive cried in public they “would not be forgiven for it”.
‘A billion people backing you’: China transfixed as Musk turns against Trump
Few break-ups have as many gossiping observers as the fallout between the once inseparable Donald Trump and Elon Musk.The ill-fated bromance between the US president and the world’s richest man, which once raised questions about American oligarchy, is now being pored over by social media users in China, many of whom are Team Musk.The latest drama comes from Musk’s pledge to found a new political party, the America party, if Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill, which Musk described as “insane” passed the Senate this week (it did). Musk had already vowed to unseat lawmakers who backed Trump’s flagship piece of legislation, which is expected to increase US national debt by $3.3tn
AI companies start winning the copyright fight
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. If you need me after this newsletter publishes, I will be busy poring over photos from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s wedding, the gaudiest and most star-studded affair to disrupt technology news this year. I found it a tacky and spectacular affair. Everyone who was anyone was there, except for Charlize Theron, who, unprompted, said on Monday: “I think we might be the only people who did not get an invite to the Bezos wedding. But that’s OK, because they suck and we’re cool
China hosts first fully autonomous AI robot football match
They think it’s all over … for human footballers at least.The pitch wasn’t the only artificial element on display at a football match in China on Saturday. Four teams of humanoid robots took on each other in Beijing, in games of three-a-side powered by artificial intelligence.While the modern game has faced accusations of becoming near-robotic in its obsession with tactical perfection, the games in China showed that AI won’t be taking Kylian Mbappé’s job just yet.Footage of the humanoid kickabout showed the robots struggling to kick the ball or stay upright, performing pratfalls that would have earned their flesh-and-blood counterparts a yellow card for diving
Whitehall’s ambition to cut costs using AI is fraught with risk
A Dragons’ Den-style event this week, where tech companies will have 20 minutes to pitch ideas for increasing automation in the British justice system, is one of numerous examples of how the cash-strapped Labour government hopes artificial intelligence and data science can save money and improve public services.Amid warnings from critics that Downing Street has been “drinking the Kool-Aid” on AI, the Department of Health and Social Care this week announced an AI early warning system to detect dangerous maternity services after a series of scandals, and Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said he wants one in eight operations to be conducted by a robot within a decade.AI is being used to prioritise actions on the 25,000 pieces of correspondence the Department for Work and Pensions receives each day and to detect potential fraud and error in benefit claims. Ministers even have access to an AI tool that is supposed to provide a “vibe check” on parliamentary opinion to help them weigh the political risks of policy proposals.Again and again, ministers are turning to technology to tackle acute crises that in the past might have been dealt with by employing more staff or investing more money
Musk vows to unseat lawmakers who support Trump’s sweeping spending bill
Elon Musk has vowed to unseat lawmakers who support Donald Trump’s sweeping budget bill, which he has criticized because it would increase the country’s deficit by $3.3tn.“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame! And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he wrote on his social media platform, X.A few hours later he added that if the “insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day”.With these threats, lobbed at lawmakers over social media, the tech billionaire has launched himself back into a rift with the US president he helped prop up
Gov.uk smartphone app to launch with limited functionality
A government app intended to “cut life admin” will be free to download by millions of UK citizens from Tuesday, but its functions will be limited and the cabinet minister in charge has admitted: “The design is not as we would like it to be.”The gov.uk app will be accessible on smartphones for people aged 16 and over and is intended to be the main mobile hub for many citizen interactions with the government, although not the NHS or HM Revenue and Customs.Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, said the version launched this week would only steer users to existing government webpages, with more functionality to be added by the end of the year.A generative artificial intelligence chatbot trained on 700,000 pages of the gov
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