Rachel Reeves is incompetent because she misunderstands her role. She thinks being an economist is an advantage as Chancellor of the Exchequer.Her MSc in economics is irrelevant to being Chancellor.1 She’s been appointed as Chancellor to implement Labour’s economic policy and drive the agenda forward. The Treasury’s function is implementing government policy.
The Treasury
Aged 31, in 2010, Rachel won a parliamentary seat and abandoned her career in economics. Her choice was politics not economics.
So what?
The Treasury’s top three3 have decades of implementing economic decision-making from different parties. They serve the government in office. The Treasury is full of experts in every form of economics. An economist as Chancellor is redundant. What matters for Treasury planning is aspirational coherence and a ‘direction of travel’. The Treasury has one job, which is to translate political preferences into economic decisions.
Group Think
“….. between 1922 and 2022 the British political elite suffered from an almost perennial problem of a lack of diversity – being drawn from the more wealthy and educated parts of society.”4
Rachel, her deputy and two of the three Treasury leadership team, went to Oxford University. Her deputy studied the same course as she did. Their late adolescence was spent in the same intellectual environment at the same university. Adolescence is formative and people are impressionable before they find their feet intellectually speaking. They wanted a good degree, which meant ‘critically’ accepting orthodoxy. Having succeeded, they cashed in on their Oxford degree. Rachel, her deputy, and the Treasury team have been groomed. The consequence is a crushing conformity, which is unchallenged because Oxford has captured the political class.5
This was the central plank in the critique of former prime minister,
“Liz Truss and her allies attacking the department for being ideologically anti-growth and anti-democratic in the way it worked with ministers.”6
Eight7 of Starmer’s cabinet went to Oxford and remain in its clammy intellectual grip. This is a frightening metric and guarantees Group Think.
Political decision-making
Aneurin Bevan’s searing experiences of health care in pre-war Welsh villages formed his decision to introduce a ‘free at the point of use’ health service in 1948. The UK was bankrupt and reliant on America through the Marshall Aid programme.8 Treasury officials denounced him as reckless but the NHS was forced through as a policy decision. Clement Attlee used his massive parliamentary majority to change Britain for the better.
Bevan9 left school at 14 with profound political beliefs. From the working-class Bevan we move to Labour’s Chancellor Hugh Dalton: a virtual aristocrat. He was educated at Eton and Oxford and was a professional economist. Profound political beliefs, a professional economist and commitment to religion informed his decision making. Bevan and Dalton were poles apart but political brothers. Dalton pressured the Treasury to bend to the will of their political leaders. Dalton was one of them, so to speak, and this carried a lot of weight.
Attlee’s government were political risk takers because they had courageous leaders. Both Attlee and Dalton had served in WW1. They were from upper-middle class backgrounds, being educated at private schools. They had servants as children but they’d shared the trenches with working-class heroes and learned that poverty didn’t mean moral failure. Their politics was inclusive. They knew that redistribution of wealth was the only moral course for a Labour government and they were totally unashamed about it. They wanted leveling up.
Conclusion
Starmer’s cabinet have been captured by the Establishment, which is,
“… is a self-selecting, closed elite entrenched within specific institutions — hence, a relatively small social class can exercise all socio-political control.”9 (my emphasis)
The 2025 Budget was timid and apologetic. It needed a bold statement of Labour values on the two-child benefit disgrace. Doing good by stealth is Godly but is awful politics.
Notes
1 Rachel Reeves’s real banking roles revealed after claim she was an economist See also, “I’m really proud of having worked as an economist at the Bank of England before I became an MP, and also in financial services at Halifax Bank of Scotland. I’ve got the experience to do this job as Chancellor of the Exchequer… Rachel Reeves refuses 3 times to explain CV economist claims | Politics | News | Express.co.uk NB All biographical details were garnered from Wikipedia.
2 PPE is ‘Politics, Philosophy and Economics’.
3 James Bowler, Sam Beckett and Beth Russell. The curious parallel Treasury called the Office of Budget Responsibility was chaired by Richard Hughes for this budget. He too was educated at Oxford. One executive committee member studied at Oxford, the other studied at Manchester. Their responsibility is ensuring that the figures ‘add up’, which is ludicrous. Source Who we are – Office for Budget Responsibility
4 The education of Britain’s political elite 1922-2022 | British Politics and Policy at LSE
5 loc.cit.
6 Treasury ‘orthodoxy’ | Institute for Government
7 Out of 25: Another three went to Cambridge University PowerPoint Presentation Starmer’s higher degree was taken at Oxford
8 The largest recipient of Marshall Plan money was the United Kingdom (receiving about 26% of the total). This is about $35bn in 2025 money. Marshall Plan – Wikipedia
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