Rachel Reeves: ‘I’m sure I have’ kissed a Tory

LONDON — Rachel Reeves is “sure” she has kissed a Tory and says she would encourage others to be less “tribal, in politics and in life.”

The shadow chancellor joins the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, in dismissing the “never kissed a Tory” badge of honor favoured by some of her more left-wing Labour colleagues. 

“I’m sure I have,” she tells a new episode of POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast. “Unlike maybe some of my colleagues I don’t go around voter ID-ing people.”

The debate was rekindled last year when Shadow Culture Secretary Lucy Powell wore a T-shirt emblazoned with “never kissed a Tory” to a Pride event in Manchester. The slogan was popular in some Labour circles, particularly during the leadership of the left-winger Jeremy Corbyn, but is seen by the more centrist Starmer and Reeves as alienating crucial swing voters.

“I don’t think we need to be quite so tribal in politics and in life,” Reeves says of the phrase. “It’s good to be challenged politically, even within your own side or across the House. It makes you sharper, it makes you clear about what you believe, and it strengthens your own arguments, I think, if you’re challenged.” 

“Just because you’re in a different political party doesn’t mean that you can’t find common cause on issues. And there are Conservative MPs and former MPs that I admire and that I count as friends.” 

In a wide-ranging interview with the Westminster Insider podcast, the woman hoping to become the first female chancellor also described being “scarred” by Labour’s unexpected election defeat in 2015 under Ed Miliband. 

She also reveals that she hasn’t “felt as confident as I do now about Labour’s chances” of winning the next general election under Starmer.