In opposition, Rachel Reeves used to do a monthly phone-in with me. She even did one on the evening of Jeremy Hunt’s last budget a year ago. Ever since she has been Chancellor I’ve been trying to persuade her to do something similar but until this week to no avail. On Monday we were told that I’d be doing an interview with her at Number 11 a few hours after she delivered the Spring Statement? “Who else is she doing interviews with?” I asked Corey, my LBC producer. “No one. Just you,” came the reply. Gulp. No pressure, then. That’s what every interviewer wants – an exclusive one on one. We were told she’s be doing a newspaper interview and also a podcast, but we were the only broadcast interview.
As many of you know, I don’t like preparing for interviews, and certainly don’t like to prepare questions, but this was different. We were told we’d have 15 minutes. My LBC colleague Connor Hand is a dab had at briefing presenters for this sort of thing, so he came up with a briefing document, with some suggested questions a couple of hours after the Spring Statement, which I had watched at home.
Given radio is also about the visuals nowadays our video crew went down to Downing Street, but one of them wasn’t on the list, so he was late getting in. I turned up at around 5pm with producer Chris Humphris and our deputy managing editor Caroline Allen, who was briefly my producer during my first year at LBC.
The interview was to be conducted in Rachel’s office, which. Again was a bit of coup. We waited, and waited and waited. The time shifted from 5.20 to 5.35pm but still there was no sign of her. It turned out she was next door with Robert Peston and Steph McGovern. We started to get a bit twitchy when we got to 5.50pm and were told by a press officer we only had 7 minutes. “You must be joking,” I said. Apparently she had to get a train to Cardiff, but I figured there were later trains she could get. But given my live show was now only just over an hour away I knew we couldn’t wait too much longer. Anyway, she finally walked through the door and off we went, after posing with her red box! I don't know what was in it, but it was very heavy. I told her to imagine how different my Spring Statement would have been compared to hers. She grabbed it back immediately!
I’d arranged that Chris would stand behind the camera facing me so he could signal how much time we had left. In the end he didn’t so I had no clue. In the end the interview lasted 17 minutes! When I told the press officer I was expecting him to wind me up, he said he didn’t like to as he knew Rachel and I went back a long way! Good man.
I asked all the questions you’d expect me to ask, and got the answers I expected to get. Rachel can be quite a challenge to interview in that she is very good at sticking to a brief – as you would expect. But I threw in a couple of curveballs at the end and got a line out of her on Darren Jones, the chief secretary, likening cuts in welfare reforms to cutting children’s pocket money. I said I thought it was crass, but doubled down on it and defended him. Only today did I discover it had actually been Keir Starmer who had first made the analogy at a cabinet meeting the day before!
I deliberately didn’t ask her about the Concert ticket freebies as I didn’t imagine she’d say anything new. But when we had finished, as she was leaving the room, I did ask if she had known about some of the lyrics in Sabrina Carpenter’s songs. “I mean, one of them has the word ‘motherfucker in it,” I told her. “I know,” she said, throwing her head back. “I hope my daughter didn’t clock that one! I’m a terrible mother,” she laughed, as she continued to chortle as she walked down the corridor. I then regretted not asking her about it on air. Hey ho.
Rachel Reeves is one of those politicians who is excellent company and very, very funny when she’s not in politician mode. Being chancellor doesn’t give any politician many opportunities to show that side of their character, but rust me, she’s very entertaining.