Rachel Reeves avoided making eye contact with Kemi Badenoch today after the Conservative leader accused her of falsehoods regarding the Budget.

As the Chancellor turned her gaze away, Mrs. Badenoch fixed her stare on the screen during their separate BBC interviews earlier this morning.

After this tense encounter, Ms. Reeves expressed discomfort over the Opposition leader’s harsh criticisms in the Commons.

She accused Mrs. Badenoch of making personal attacks, highlighting her mockery of the Chancellor’s complaints about ‘mansplaining.’

In response, Mrs. Badenoch told Laura Kuenssberg that her role is to hold the Government accountable, not to offer emotional support to the Chancellor.

She remarked that while Labour ministers are quick to criticize, they struggle to handle criticism themselves, reiterating her call for Ms. Reeves to resign over ‘lying.’

Rachel Reeves studiously avoided meeting the gaze of Tory leader Kemi Badenoch as they both prepared to be interviewed on the BBC this morning

Ms Reeves complained that she had been made ‘uncomfortable’ by the Opposition chief’s brutal attacks on the Budget in the Commons

Mrs Badenoch told presenter Laura Kuenssberg that her ‘job is to hold the Government to account, not to provide emotional support for the Chancellor’

The Tories have accused Ms Reeves of ‘lying’ to soften the country up for tax increases

The barbed comments came after the Tory leader said Ms Reeves ‘lied’ about the state of the finances in order to soften up the public for monster Budget tax hikes. 

Ms Reeves dragged Keir Starmer into the crisis today amid rising fury, saying the PM had been fully aware of what she was doing. 

She insisted OBR’s downgrades were to blame for her decision to heap another £30billlion on taxes – even though the watchdog had in fact been informing her privately that there was no structural black hole in the finances. 

And she denied that her extraordinary fear-mongering about the state of the government’s books amounted to lying.

Ms Reeves spent weeks before the fiscal package was unveiled talking up how the independent body had found a huge black hole in the books.

However, it has emerged that the OBR told her as long ago as September that productivity downgrades were being offset by better tax revenues. 

In fact by the end of October Budget forecasts were showing her running a small surplus, with only Labour’s own political choices to boost benefits meaning that she needed to impose a massive package of tax hikes.

Ms Reeves told Sky News that the ‘big downgrade in productivity’ was the main factor in her decisions, saying it had a ‘big impact’ and ‘that’s why I had to ask people to contribute more’.

Ms Reeves admitted she did know that she was running a surplus when she gave an extraordinary breakfast-time speech talking up the grim state of the public finances.

But she denied ‘lying’ to the public about the situation, arguing that she needed a bigger buffer to avoid markets panicking about government debt. 

Ms Reeves sparked shock from presenter Trevor Phillips by initially dodging a question on whether she had ‘lied’ to the public.

But pressed again she said: ‘Of course I didn’t.’

A letter from the OBR to the Treasury Select Committee has been published spelling out the timetable of exactly what forecasts were provided to the Chancellor as she drew up her Budget package

As turmoil continued over the Budget today:

• Asked if the PM knew about the OBR’s financial forecasts in the run-up to the Budget, she said: ‘Yes of course. We are a partnership.’ 
• Ms Reeves again tried to argue that the Labour manifesto had not been breached because tax ‘rates’ had not changed, despite admitting ‘working people’ will pay more. ‘We didn’t break the manifesto. We haven’t broken the manifesto,’ she said. 
• Ms Reeves acknowledged her argument about a lack of headroom was partly because the OBR’s estimates of a surplus ‘didn’t include the policy choices that we had made between the Spring and the Autumn’.
• She stopped short of guaranteeing the head of the OBR is safe after the Treasury issued a thinly-veiled rebuke to the watchdog for revealing what it told the government when. 
• Downing Street has mounted a frantic operation to shore up the Chancellor, with Sir Keir due to hold a press conference tomorrow.

Asked about Mrs Badenoch’s Commons attacks on the Budget, Ms Reeves said: ‘I don’t like that sort of stuff. I don’t do it. I try to concentrate on policies rather than personalities.

‘I would just say that Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss’s budget, she said was 100 per cent right, so I’m not totally sure whether her judgment chimes with the British public.

‘But as a politician, I have always tried to focus on the issues and not the personalities. It’s just not the sort of politics that I do.

‘So, yes, I was a bit uncomfortable listening to that, because it’s not really the way that I behave, but people are entitled to deliver the Budget response that they want and she focused on personalities.

‘I would have preferred to hear Kemi Badenoch set out her alternative economic proposals. We haven’t heard that.’

But Mrs Badenoch dismissed the idea she had gone too far.

‘I remember last year’s Budget – Rachel Reeves took a swipe at me, I wasn’t even Leader of the Opposition then – she’s forgotten now,’ she said.

‘I remember when Rachel Reeves was out there calling Rishi Sunak a liar. I remember when they were all calling Liz Truss a lettuce.

‘But now it’s them and I’m merely talking about her competence. They can’t take it. They like to dish it, but they can’t take it.

The barbed comments came after the Tory leader said Ms Reeves ‘lied’ about the state of the finances in order to soften up the public for monster Budget tax hikes

Despite the on-screen froideur, behind-the-scenes photos suggest that the pair did share a joke at one point

‘My job is to hold the Government to account, not to provide emotional support for the Chancellor and the people out there wanted someone to tell her she was doing a bad job, and I had to make sure that I got that message across.’

Ms Badenoch added: ‘I don’t care whether people misbehave at the despatch box. What I care about is whether or not I’m doing a good job.

‘She should care about whether or not she’s doing a good job – she’s doing a terrible job.’

She said: ‘The Chancellor called an emergency press conference telling everyone about how terrible the state of the finances were and now we have seen that the OBR had told her the complete opposite.

‘She was raising taxes to pay for welfare.

‘The only thing that was unfunded was the welfare payments which she has made and she’s doing it on the backs of a lot of people out there who are working very hard and getting poorer.

‘And because of that, I believe she should resign.’

Ms Badenoch added: ‘The shadow chancellor Mel Stride has written to the FCA.

‘Hopefully there will be an investigation, because it looks like what she was doing was trying to pitch-roll her budget – tell everyone how awful it would be and then they wouldn’t be as upset when she finally announced it – and still sneak in those tax rises to pay for welfare.

‘That’s not how we should be running this process. We need people to have confidence in our system, in what the Chancellor is going to announce.’

Despite the on-screen froideur, behind-the-scenes photos suggest that the pair did share a joke at one point.