Former Bank of England economist Rachel Reeves is set to become the UK’s first female finance minister following Labour’s election victory. She now represents the economic seriousness of a party that says it has “changed”.
“Tough choices ahead”
Rachel Reeves, who until now was responsible for economic issues in the opposition, has been hammering home for many months that Labour is now “the natural party for business”. Competing on the turf of her Conservative rivals.
She insists that “change will only come with iron discipline” on public finances, and after being re-elected MP for the North of England, she insists that her task will not be “easy”: “There is no quick fix and difficult choices lie ahead”.
First woman finance minister
At 45, Rachel Reeves becomes the first woman to hold the second most prestigious post in the British government. With her impeccable bob, she has held this venerable position for 800 years.
The new “Chancellor of the Exchequer”, her official title, believes that the UK is now “as it was in the late 1970s, at an inflection point”. This is a way of referring, without quoting her, to another “Iron Lady”: former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to head the British government in 1979.
But unlike Mrs. Thatcher, who implemented a massive privatization policy, Ms. Reeves advocates a more active role for the state, particularly through investment in strategic sectors, inspired in particular by the policy of US President Joe Biden.
“An iron chancellor”
While she has had to scale back an overpriced ยฃ28 billion (โฌ33 billion) a year green infrastructure spending plan, she insists she wants to improve living standards, workers’ pay and “rebuild public services”.
“When she talks about being an iron chancellor”, this means “balancing the books” and “using (the weight of) the state, but responsibly”, explains James Wood, professor of political economy at Cambridge University.
Since 2019, the year of the defeat of the very left-wing Jeremy Corbyn, the party has refocused. Revenge for the economist. Once considered too far to the right and marginalized within her political family, she has returned to center stage thanks to a close-knit tandem with Keir Starmer, who is set to become Prime Minister.
“A very pragmatic approach”
Ms. Reeves and Mr. Starmer “have taken a very pragmatic approach” that will “make the left of the party very unhappy, but thinking it’s better to win an election,” add Mr. Wood. “They want to distance themselves from fiscal irresponsibility, not make big spending promises they can’t keep”.
The posture is particularly aimed at marking its difference from the short-lived government of former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss, who rocked the economy with a massive, unfunded budget in 2022.
Born into a London teaching family, the leader joined the Labour Party at the age of 17, seduced by the mantra “education, education, education” of then Labour leader Tony Blair, who would go on to win a landslide victory at the polls the following year, in 1997, she tells Telegraph magazine.
A “competent” and “intelligent” woman
While she describes the daily life of a middle-class family where “there was no money to waste”, she also frequents the benches of Oxford University, which, along with Cambridge, epitomizes the British elite.
A BBC journalist described her as a “boring snore” in 2013, but her image is very different today: seen above all as “competent” and “intelligent” by the British, according to a study relayed in February by Politico.
Lover of karaoke and chess
Having spent her career at Halifax-Bank of Scotland, when it was rescued from bankruptcy by its rival Lloyds during the financial crisis, she has held a seat at Westminster since 2010 alongside her younger sister, Ellie Reeves, also a Labour MP.
Married to a senior civil servant who was a pen-pusher to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, she has two children with him. Rachel Reeves also enjoys karaoke and chess. She won a women’s under-14 prize and once played and lost against Russian legend Garry Kasparov.