‘Economist’ years weren’t what she claimed, according to former bank boss
Right-wing Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves is facing calls for her resignation over reports that she faked her job history during the her 2010 campaign to become Leeds West MP.
Reeves told voters in the Yorkshire constituency that she had worked “as an economist … at Halifax Bank of Scotland” when in fact she worked in a mid-ranking position in an admin and IT support department at the bank. The claim promoted even centrist journalist Michael Crick to comment that she needs to resign or be sacked as Chancellor:
Others were less gentle – just a few examples appear below:
The issue appears to have come to light following a Linkedin post by the bank’s former Director of Banking Operations, Kev Gillett, alleging not only that she was not an economist, but that she resigned after an ‘expenses scandal’ in which managers were signing off each other’s expenses and that Reeves was taking time off for medical appointments that was in fact used for council business:
Reeves’s history as an MP does little to mitigate against the allegations. Last year she was embroiled in a plagiarism scandal after eagle-eyed critics spotted that she had lifted at least twenty sections of Wikipedia wholesale for ‘her’ new book:
She was also disciplined by parliamentary standards body IPSA and had her MP’s credit card suspended for excessive use. In September this year she was found to have reported thousands in donations of designer clothes from multimillionaire Labour peer Lord Alli – but described the donation as ‘office support’:
Reeves has also claimed to have resigned from Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet when she was never in it – and just last month, she was rebuked by Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle for a ‘totally unacceptable’ breach of the ministerial code when she gave information to US journalists about her approaching Budget before informing UK lawmakers.
In a functioning democracy, even the suggestion of such a history would require Reeves’s immediate resignation or sacking. In the current UK political landscape, she is likely to try to hang on with the support of red-Tory PM Keir Starmer – hardly a stranger to dishonesty and shady donations himself – but must be put under relentless pressure until she finally goes. The tragedy for the UK is that under Starmer, her replacement will be equally toxic and damaging for the people of the UK.
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Resign? And get a whopping ministerial pension?
F**k RIGHT off. Should be jailed.
From Richard Murphy:
Rachel Reeves’ Budget is falling apart
From the Guardian:
UK retailers warn Reeves of £7bn hit from budget tax rises
Increase in national insurance contributions and national living wage will add to costs, says BRC
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/19/uk-retailers-rachel-reeves-budget-tax-rises-brc
Also from Richard Murphy:
Rachel Reeves really is a very big threat to the well-being of this country
As Rachel Reeves made clear in her Mansion House speech last night, she wants to relax banking regulations. Big bonuses will be coming back, paid much sooner than has been permitted of late. The aim is to increase risk-taking in financial services. She is issuing new remit letters to the Bank of England and others, emphasising that this is her expectation, although copies do not appear to be available as yet. Her belief is that this will boost the economy. She is wrong…
…Rachel Reeves went out of her way in her speech to describe the financial services sector as ‘the crown jewel in our economy’. This is total nonsense because there is literally nothing that the financial service sector can do to add value to the economy without there being opportunities for them to fund within the remainder of the economy. In other words, the financial service sector that Rachel Reeves describes can only have a parasitical role, extracting value from the real productive value of the economy created entirely outside the walls of the City of London. Reeves appears unaware of this…
…It was the growth capacity of the supposed speculative capital aggregation activity to which she was making reference, and there is no evidence this adds value, or that changes to it can produce beneficial outcomes.
…[For example] Rachel Reeves wishes to aggregate the 86 existing local [authority pension] funds and create eight mega funds from them. She claims that this will improve their contribution to the UK economy. What she ignores is that the criteria for the success of these funds is whether they are able, or not, to meet the likely financial requirements of their members when they are in retirement. Nothing else matters and at present, these funds have between them an aggregate surplus of approximately £100 billion. In other words, they are more than succeeding at delivering for the people to whom they have obligation. Unless she can demonstrate that aggregating these funds to create a pool of opportunity for higher risk, and so potentially lower return investment, can deliver better outcomes for the members in question (who have never got a mention in her discussion of this issue) then her proposal is recklessly irresponsible…
…Did Reeves have anything useful to say about the economy as a consequence yesterday? No, is the answer to that. She added no value at all. But, she did threaten the well-being of a group of pensioners who are currently very well served by their local authority trustees.
She also significantly increased the chance that there will be future significant financial instability in the City of London by encouraging the taking of short-term speculative positions that are highly risky but which do fuel the payment of bonuses wholly inappropriately to people who have no downside consequences from undertaking this activity, of which asymmetry she appears to have no understanding.
So, was this a good night for the economy? No, it most definitely was not. Rachel Reeves is really a very big threat to the well-being of this country.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/11/15/rachel-reeves-really-is-a-very-big-threat-to-the-well-being-of-this-country/
No wonder she never absorbed Modern Monetary Theory. Filing isn’t the best preparation for bestriding the world’s economy.
Take a look at this:
https://labourlist.org/2024/11/labour-scotland-winter-fuel-payments-holyrood-election/
Liz Truss has a rival! Every time she opens her mouth she advertises her bone-stupidity, both in the drivel she spouts and the mechanical delivery she employs. The entire cabinet, in fact, is riddled with incompetents. Not a single member commands (or is worthy of) respect.
Fake-it-till-you-make-it is now the default, indeed the desired, quality deemed necessary to enter politics for future generations of con artists with no actual talent!