 "Who is Rachel Reeves, poised to be Britain’s first woman finance minister?")
Shortly after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak conceded defeat, the left-of-centre Labour Party crossed the majority mark winning the highly-anticipated 2024 UK general elections.
With almost all the results in, Keir Starmer’s party had won 410 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons and the Conservatives 118.
Starmer is set to become the UK’s first Labour Prime Minister in 14 years, and if reports are to be believed, Rachel Reeves will take on the role of chancellor of exchequer, having been the party’s finance spokesperson in opposition.
She will be Britain’s first female finance minister as she wins the election from the Leeds West and Pudsey constituencies.
Here’s all we know about her.
Who is Rachel Reeves?
Rachel Reeves, who comes from a family of educators, has worked as an economist for a decade.
The 45-year-old is known for winning the title of British girls’ chess champion at the age of 14
According to The Times of India, she attended the University of Oxford to study philosophy, politics, and economics, and went on to the London School of Economics to earn a Master’s degree.
As an economist, she has held positions in the Bank of England and the private sector.
Reeves is described by those who have known her since college as confident and earnest.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“She was a good student; in a good year, probably the best,” recalled Christopher Allsopp, a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, who taught her at New College, Oxford.
He told The Guardian, “I remember talking to her about different things like the Treasury, the Bank of England – and I remember her deciding that she would go for the Bank.”
There, she managed to successfully navigate what one modern observer remembers as a male-dominated, “aggressive,” and intensely competitive setting. The position gave the 23-year-old high-level access to Congress, the White House, and the Federal Reserve.
According to the report, the British embassy’s then-manager, Dame Sue Owen, remembers Reeves as “quite something” who was “obviously very clever, but also very ambitious.” She was pleasant and social, but she could also pick up on disagreements quickly.
Later, she was employed with the British retail bank HBOS in 2008, when the world financial crisis struck, necessitating a sizeable bailout from the Labour government of Gordon Brown.
Before her tenure at HBOS, according to The Guardian, Reeves had made an unsuccessful bid for the seat of Bromley and Chislehurst in south London, her childhood neighbourhood.
Before the 2010 general election, which threw Labour out of power, she was elected from Leeds West, but she was forced to remain on the backbenchers.
Reeves declined to join the front bench following Labour’s electoral defeat in the 2015 general election. However, as the chair of the business select committee, she assumed control and is most known for questioning executives at the defunct outsourcing firm Carillion.
At the Labour Party conference in Liverpool in 2016, Reeves was once asked what she would do on day one if she became the first female chancellor of the exchequer, to which she asserted that she would fix the UK’s dysfunctional childcare system, which be “good for women, good for the economy.”
She was appointed by Labour leader Keir Starmer as the party’s finance spokesperson in 2021.
After eight years, Reeves is about to fulfil a lifelong dream. She declared that it “would be the privilege of my lifetime” to become the first female chancellor in the position’s history.
Reeves is quite a private woman who is married to Nick Joicey, a top civil official, and they have two children. Ellie, her younger sister, joined her in Westminster in 2017 as the MP for Lewisham West and Penge.
What will be her focus?
Following her re-election today, Reeves acknowledged the gravity of the challenges ahead, including the need to address deteriorating public services and the cost-of-living crisis.
She said, “I know that the road ahead will not be easy. There are no quick fixes and hard choices lie ahead.”
“We are under no illusions about the scale of the challenge that we face or about the severity of the challenges that we will inherit from the Conservatives. It will come with a great weight of responsibility. I embrace it. It will demand hard work and harder choices. I am ready for them.”
She noted that the UK’s debt burden is running at 100 per cent of the country’s national income and the tax burden at a seven-decade high.
She said she “can’t promise to turn everything around straight away.”
Reeves said the driving mission of an incoming Labour government is to kickstart economic growth.
Reeves’s Treasury will have tremendous power throughout Whitehall as a result of this imperative — possibly not seen since Gordon Brown’s heyday — but she will also be at the centre of fierce resource disputes.
Affirming this new direction in a recent address to company bosses, she said, “This changed Labour Party is today the natural party of British businesses.” She highlighted the need for “iron discipline” over public finances, drawing comparisons with Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister, as reported by AFP.
Inspired by US President Joe Biden’s policies, Reeves supports a type of renationalisation, especially in the energy industry, as per TOI.
In partnership with business, Labour has suggested establishing Great British Energy, a publicly traded corporation that would spearhead financing for the “green” shift away from fossil fuels.
On Labour and Reeves’ approach to public finances, James Wood, a senior teaching associate in political economy at the University of Cambridge, told AFP, “When she talks about being an iron chancellor, I think what she means is: we’re going to balance the books and we’re going to be responsible – and we’re going to try and get Britain’s economy running… in a responsible way."
Several years ago while delivering the Mais lecture at the Bayes Business School in London, Reeves proposed her solution to Britain’s economic woes: “securonomics.” She said Britain needed faster growth and there were three pre-conditions for achieving it: stability, investment and reform, as per The Guardian.
“Let me be unambiguous: there is no viable growth strategy today which does not rest upon resilience for our national economy and security for working people,” she said, adding that Britain was living in an age of insecurity. According to her, the answer to the problem was not the big state but the smart and strategic state.
Leeds is one of the largest financial hubs in the UK outside of London, and ever since she was appointed shadow chancellor, she has frequently visited boardrooms in the City. Reeves’s catchphrase, which is primarily intended to reassure voters but also serves the interests of the City, is that Labour’s strong stance on public finances is “non-negotiable.”
It seems that her message, “stability is change” was effective. Reeves’ insistence on a simplified, fully costed platform has hindered the Tories’ attempt to campaign the election on the basis of Labour’s £2,000 “tax bombshell.”
Also read: Who is Lady Victoria: Keir Starmer's wife & soon-to-be UK's first lady
UK general elections 2024
Britain’s Labour Party swept to power Friday after more than a decade in opposition, as a jaded electorate handed the party a landslide victory — but also a mammoth task of reinvigorating a stagnant economy and dispirited nation.
Labour leader Keir Starmer will officially become prime minister later in the day, leading his party back to government less than five years after it suffered its worst defeat in almost a century. In the merciless choreography of British politics, he will take charge in 10 Downing St. hours after Thursday’s votes are counted — as Conservative leader Rishi Sunak is hustled out.
“A mandate like this comes with a great responsibility,” Starmer acknowledged in a speech to supporters, saying that the fight to regain people’s trust after years of disillusionment “is the battle that defines our age."
Speaking as drawn broke in London, he said Labour would offer “the sunlight of hope, pale at first but getting stronger through the day.”
Sunak conceded defeat, saying the voters had delivered a “sobering verdict.”
With inputs from agencies
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