Rachel Reeves has said she won’t apologise for crying during Prime Minister’s Questions last year, but admitted she regretted attending the Commons while upset that day.
The chancellor, who was captured on TV crying behind Sir Keir Starmer in July, said she might choose to stay in her office rather than attend PMQs next time.
At the time, Ms Reeves said she had been crying as a result of personal matters. But her tears came at the same time as the PM refused to guarantee that she would still be in post at the next election.
Pressure had been mounting on Sir Keir to sack her as chancellor, alongside his controversial chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, over a welfare U-turn that left a £5bn hole in the public finances.
In the wake of Ms Reeves being seen crying in the Commons – which spooked financial markets and knocked the value of the pound – Downing Street insisted that the chancellor had Sir Keir’s “full backing” and was “going nowhere”.
Speaking to Mumsnet almost a year after the incident, the chancellor said: “Well, I regret going to PMQs – but you know, if I’d have known that was going to happen, obviously I wouldn’t have gone.
“I expect most of your Mumsnet users would have had a day at work when they felt overcome with emotion for whatever reason.
“I guess the difference in my job is that the TV cameras are on when that happens. So I’m not going to apologise for crying. I don’t think people should do that.
“But I think next time I feel like doing that, I’ll stay in the office.”
The same interview with Mumsnet also saw Ms Reeves admit that she does not use artificial intelligence to do her job, despite previously calling it the “defining technology of our era” in a major speech.
Asked which AI platform she uses, the chancellor – who has set a target for Britain to have the fastest rate of AI adoption of any country in the G7 – said: “I don’t use anything.”
When it was suggested that the systems could help her, Ms Reeves joked in response: “Maybe that’s where I’m going wrong.”
The prime minister has made AI a central part of Britain’s economic strategy, having promised £2bn for the AI Opportunities Action Plan over the next five years.
And just this week, the chancellor also launched a £500m fund to support British AI companies.
