Rachel Reeves has pulled off a remarkable disappearing act. In the last few months of 2025, the Chancellor was ubiquitous. She did a seemingly non-stop media blitz to lay the groundwork for tax rises in the November Budget, then was deployed again to try and persuade voters that all that pain would lead to meaningful gains.

But in 2026, the situation has been different. Reeves has rarely made big headlines, with the main story coming out of the Treasury being an embarrassing U-turn on the decision to slap higher business rates on most pubs. This is partly because polls show she may not be the most effective carrier of the Government’s message. Just 12 per cent of voters say the Chancellor is doing a good job, according to BMG Research, with 60 per cent disapproving of her performance.

It is also connected to the bruising experience of the pre-Budget period, when Reeves had to fight off claims she was misleading the public and unsettling markets due to a series of leaks and wavering over whether or not to breach Labour’s manifesto promises by raising income tax.

Recent weeks have seen economic policy sidelined, first by the panic over Donald Trump’s threats to seize Greenland and then by the Labour infighting which followed the reigniting of the Peter Mandelson scandal. Next month the Spring Statement, in previous years treated as a sort of miniature Budget, will be a non-event with no changes to tax or spending policy.

But Sir Keir Starmer cannot afford to have Reeves off the pitch for long. He claims – repeatedly – that the cost of living is by far his main priority, but has done little in 2026 to prove that that is true. Voters scoff at the idea that the Labour Government is doing anything to cut their bills. When presented with individual policies, such as the freeze in this year’s rail fares, they tend to suggest that these are outweighed by the overall burden of rising costs.

So it is bad news for Starmer that his Chancellor is such a flawed messenger. The business leaders who once lavished praise on her now accuse her of making their lives more difficult, while voters who once admired her no-nonsense demeanour are clearly less impressed by the messy realities of governing.

One simple solution would be for the Prime Minister to pick someone else to run the Treasury. In fact, this is a less straightforward idea than it might seem – and could make Starmer’s plight even more difficult.

He long ago yoked his political image to that of Reeves, insisting they would govern as a pair. He accepted from the start that his ambitions for the state would be constrained by the straightjacket of the Chancellor’s fiscal rules, in an attempt to show that Labour had changed from the reckless past.

Labour MPs would not accept an attempted makeover. Starmer without Reeves would not make sense, and would not survive long. Besides, keeping her in post allows him to maintain a delicate balance between the different wings of his party: replacing her with someone from the Labour right, like Wes Streeting, or the left, like Ed Miliband, would only alienate one faction or the other.

Reeves, to be fair, has a plan to return to centre stage in the coming months. I am told she will launch a charm offensive with economists, City figures and leading commentators to point out that after a period of stagnation there are some green shoots in the economic data – though other metrics, such as unemployment, still look poor.

Then from April, when cost of living measures from the Budget such as a £150-a-year energy bills discount come into force, she will speak directly to voters to try and win back those who ask what Labour is actually doing for them.

The hope within the Treasury is that by then interest rates will have been cut once again, which would take the main Bank of England rate down to 3.5 per cent – compared to the 5.25 per cent it was at when Labour entered office. This was made more likely by a hefty drop in inflation this week, which economists expect to continue – by summer, inflation should be back at its 2 per cent target.

There is a path to redemption, if living standards actually do rapidly improve and the public buys the message that Starmer and Reeves deserve the credit. But pretty much everything needs to go right – and right now, the Chancellor is doing little to bolster her boss’s chances of survival.

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