Rachel Reeves will be lucky to survive

Telegraph

25-03-2025

Supporters of Rachel Reeves may be a dwindling band even inside the Labour Party but those who remain loyal believe she is being traduced because she is a woman. They say that compared to her male predecessors in the Treasury she is the victim of subliminal, or even overt, misogyny.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is proud to be the first female occupant of the post but her allies detect in the criticism of her first eight months the sort of snide comments that would not be aimed at a man.
The classic putdown is to call her 'Rachel from Accounts', a somewhat belittling description designed to emphasise that she was not the Bank of England economics guru that we might have imagined from her CV.
Criticism goes with the job and if you are too thin-skinned to take it then you would be better off pursuing another career. After all, she is by no means the first Chancellor to get it in the neck even if there is a patronising element designed to discombobulate.
As Ms Reeves prepares for her second major outing in the Commons, with a spring financial statement that will unravel many of the assumptions that underpinned her ill-starred Budget last October, how does she compare with other Chancellors of recent times?
Gordon Brown always liked to joke that there were two types of Chancellor – those who fail and those who get out in time. Arguably, Ms Reeves is already doomed because her first Budget was so misjudged that it will tarnish everything else she does even if she survives the rest of the parliament.
That will be up to her boss, the First Lord of the Treasury and Downing St neighbour. They seem to get on pretty well at the moment but these are early days and the history of this relationship is not propitious.
The recent television drama, Brian and Maggie, was lauded as a reminder of the days when politicians submitted themselves to lengthy interrogations designed to establish why they have pursued particular policies and not just to catch them out over an infelicitous remark made years ago.
The programme, written by James Graham, depicted the clash between Margaret Thatcher and Brian Walden, the Labour MP-turned-TV-inquisitor, in Oct 1989. It culminated in Walden calling out the Prime Minister for accepting the resignation of her Chancellor Nigel Lawson rather than sack her No 10 economic adviser Alan Walters.
Walden was incredulous. 'He was unassailable, you say; you were in agreement, you say; everything was going well, you say; and he said to you: 'Margaret, you have got to get rid of Alan Walters!' Why didn't you, and keep your Chancellor?'
Thatcher came to rue her failure to do so since it began a series of events that would lead to her being forced from office the following year. For her to fall out with the man she once called 'my brilliant Chancellor' after his 1988 tax cuts was extraordinary. The rift was not a trifling matter but one rooted in a fundamental disagreement over monetary policy, with Walters acting as a proxy for the Prime Minister's disapproval of her Chancellor's approach.
In his resignation speech to the Commons, Lawson said: 'The successful conduct of economic policy is possible only if there is – and is seen to be – full agreement between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.'
When Mrs Thatcher left in November 1990 and John Major, who had succeeded Lawson, became prime minister he appointed Norman Lamont to No 11. Again, the two were close but the debacle of Black Wednesday, when the pound was forced out of the ERM (which Thatcher did not want to join) and a recession (which the Lawson credit-financed boom did much to cause) led to a schism.
Lamont offered to quit after Black Wednesday but was kept on until just after the Tories lost a by-election at Newbury, and then sacked. He was subsequently credited with the economic recovery bequeathed to the Blair government. Major was accused of using his Chancellor as a lightning rod to divert the criticism from himself since he had been in favour of joining the ERM.
In his resignation statement Lamont said the government 'gives the impression of being in office but not in power', an accusation that would haunt Major until the calamitous defeat in 1997. That brought in possibly the most toxic relationship between Nos 10 and 11 with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown vying for ultimate power, with the latter often winning out. On Budget Day the joke was that the most surprised look was that on the PM's face – he hadn't a clue what was coming.
The fact they lasted 10 years together is testament to the strength of Brown's support in the party. Blair should have sacked him but couldn't. The Cameron/Osborne axis between 2010 and 2016 was one of the few post-war pairings that didn't end in tears, probably because until 2015 in their Lib Dem coalition partners they had a mutual enemy.
After that, Theresa May and Philip Hammond fell out. Boris lost his first Chancellor Sajid Javid who resigned in a row over advisers, while his second Rishi Sunak was party to the plot to get rid of him.
This is, then, not the easiest of political alliances though on average, British finance ministers appointed at the start of the government tend to stay in office for about four years.
Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves appear to have been in lock-step since the election but his travails are largely down to her Budget and its anti-growth measures masquerading as a boost to the economy.
They both dipped their hands in the same blood, agreeing to the straitjacket of manifesto promises and beholden to the strictures of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Moreover, they both subscribe to one of the greatest mistakes of modern governments – excessive optimism about their ability to stimulate non-inflationary growth.
So he cannot blame her. Or at least not yet. The Chancellor will say she has had to endure the humiliation of revisiting her plans because 'the world has changed' as though the imperative to get a grip on public spending has been apparent only since Donald Trump entered the White House.
It is an excuse that cannot hold. When we start to hear briefings against the Chancellor from a latter-day Alan Walters we will know her time is up. For now it suits Sir Keir to let the Chancellor take the flak.