Rachel Reeves was shown the door (Image: Getty)
There is, I think, an art to the workplace exit, and of that craft there are two schools. The first is the dignified resignation. You’ve seen the writing on the wall, so you firm up the handshake and accept the card signed by people who probably won’t miss you that much.
Take that glass of lukewarm prosecco and make for the exit. “It’s been a real pleasure. Stay in touch, yeah? We’ll make plans,” you can say as you duck out, never to hear from anyone ever again.
But the second school is the sacking. A cardboard box on your desk, a bored-looking security guard and the walk of shame past colleagues, suddenly deeply fascinated by their keyboards. I think Rachel Reeves, our teary chancellor, has been handed the second.
No sooner had Andy Burnham completed his march from Manchester to the front door of No 10 than he reached for the broom and swept out the woman who so recently ran the nation’s coffers.
Except one imagines Ms Reeves, who (until recently) lived just next door to the Mancunian messiah, clinging to the doorframe with the tenacity of a limpet.
“You can’t sack me! I quit!” she may have boomed. That’s the oldest face-saver in the book, deployed by generations of the freshly ousted.
Yet the ever-inventive Ms Reeves appears to have drummed up a new way to spare her blushes.
Rumours rapidly swirled that she was offered another role entirely. A “big job” no less, huffed Sky News bigwig Beth Rigby.
And of course, she turned her nose up at it!
A big job! My mind positively gallops. What could it have been? Ambassador to some sun-drenched outpost, safely 5,000 miles from a spreadsheet? A grand-sounding sinecure with a driver, a title, and absolutely no budget to balance?
I rather suspect that after her adventures with the nation’s finances, “big job” and “far away from the money” were the two essential clauses.
Whatever it was, she apparently said no. In my mind, there are only two explanations, as a politician saying no to a gig is like a labrador turning down a sausage: technically possible, but deeply against the natural order.
Either someone close to her is telling the press porkies, or Ms Reeves was saving face.
“Andy wanted me, I just didn’t want him.”
Alas, Ms Reeves heads off into the political wilderness. Somewhere, presumably, Westminster’s removals industry gains another customer.
Her legacy of helping at least one business assured, she can skip off into the sunset, content with one final slap in the face to the man who ousted her mate.