The Two Chairmen
More London pub history
Rachel Reeves, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, is no laughing matter. The Dutch comedian Wim Kan might say, “She makes other people pull funny faces,” Really though, she’s exactly what you’d expect from a Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Reeves, like Prime Minister Keir Starmer, is devoid of any sense of humor. That is a problem in British politics. So her speechwriters try to slip in a joke every now and then. It is almost painful to see how badly both politicians screw up these lighter moments in their speeches.
Still, I had to laugh at a remark Reeves’ made during her Budget presentation this week. She set up her joke by saying that Nigel Farage (leader or the Reform party) is normally a welcome guest at The Westminster Arms. This pub is a stone’s throw from Parliament and his regular since he took up a seat in the House of Commons. Then she closed with the killer line, “but now he prefers The Two Chairmen.” For the uninitiated, this is a reference to the troubles Farage’s Party is having regarding their hastily departed party leader.
Coincidentally, that same evening Reeves and her staff chose The Two Chairmen as the place to recover from the intensive weeks leading up to the Budget. As I read in the (always nice) ‘Diary’ in The Times, she was even reprimanded. The proprietor asked her not to stand in the road, but to sit nicely on the outside terrace instead.
It reminds me of one of the most enjoyable journalistic activities I have done in recent years. ‘Would you like to visit some political pubs around Westminster?’ I asked my wife when, in mid-2022, a successor had to be found for Boris Johnson. The Conservative prime minister had finally lost his last bit of credit.
She agreed. And so we went to The Marquess of Grenby, where a bell rings whenever a vote comes up in the House of Commons. At The Speaker, a little further on, there was open lamentation about the fact that they’d had to hand in their ringing bell a few years previously.
Strangely, (given Reeves recent joke) in the summer of 2022, the Westminster Arms was described as the ultimate ‘Labour’ pub. At the time, we weren’t interested in visiting it. Since then, it seems like Reform has taken over.
Back to The Two Chairmen. According to the people we spoke to in 2022, it was the home base for the Conservatives. That was confirmed a few months later when Kwasi Kwarteng was there and raised a glass to his first, and last, budget. Barely two weeks later, Kwarteng was ousted and a week after that Prime Minister Liz Truss was history.
Still, Reeves couldn't resist celebrating her budget in The Two Chairmen. She probably doesn't know that the name of the pub has nothing to do with chairmen. It refers to the chair on which two gentlemen would carry a blindly drunk person home.
But perhaps Reeves does know this. Perhaps she does have a sense of humour. It might not be good for her career, but what a blessing for herself.