Rachel Reeves: The Worst Finance Minister in the World?

The United Kingdom (UK) is the leakiest country in the Anglosphere and possibly the hardest place in the world to keep a secret. But one highly sensitive area has always appeared immune: the management of the country’s finances.

Salacious reporting on institutional safekeeping and all its extensions, all good journalists know, has consequences.

That changed in November, when the UK’s budget appeared on the website of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) an hour before Chancellor Rachel Reeves presented it to parliament. It was an event without precedent and quickly impacted via erratic gilt pricings. By the time her speech was over, the chairperson of the OBR, an independent body created – supposedly – to examine government spending, had already drafted the first lines of his resignation.

Richard Hughes was out the following Monday, another inquiry was tabled, and cybersecurity experts were commissioned to track the budget’s chain of custody as it passed in a supposedly impenetrable channel from one group to another.

The crisis marked a fitting end to an entire budgetary process polluted by hitherto unknown levels of ineptitude, leaks, fake briefings, and inaccurate information provided to the public. Prior to her budget, Reeves made a bizarre appearance before reporters, then a series of near-cryptic claims, all of which pointed to trouble ahead and, finally, an adamant bark that she would “do what is right”, which is another way of saying, “not necessarily in the country’s interests”.

Shocking year

Reeves has suffered a shocking year since her election.

With the exceptions of obscenely remunerated civil servants and those of extravagant welfare, she is loathed – possibly the most unpopular chancellor in the country’s history.

Her first mistake was to be caught lying on her LinkedIn resume, followed by lies about the economy (not exclusive to her), then exaggerations about her chess career. She had claimed to be an “economist” for a retail bank. Here she was quickly jeered as a dissembler by former colleagues who identified her real role, which was at the help centre. According to these people, she was called in for being caught canvassing for the Labour Party while claiming she had a “dentist” appointment. Having been rumbled, she resigned.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this spectacle was her unwillingness to try and make her past – and indeed her economy with the truth – work for her. That lay in the millions of citizens who were feeling the pinch of her party’s policies, or finding themselves unemployed, or – like she did – working in sub-optimal conditions without the prospect of further upward mobility. Had she emerged to apologise and explain, an inevitable empathy would have followed. Translated, it is a formidable political force, and one which could have cushioned the blow that was to come from her budget disaster.

She didn’t take it.

Ideological allies

In preparing for November’s budget, Reeves approached friendlies at ideologically aligned broadsheets, namely the Financial Times and The Times. But she didn’t talk of her ruinous policies or the out-of-control government spending. Instead, it was a sort of shagged-out #MeToo retrofit: “I’m sick of being mansplained,” she moaned, thereafter giving one of the writers some demonstrative theatre by confronting a North Sea oil man who had complained about the taxes his industry was being subjected to. “You will respect me,” Reeves growled at the man, “I am the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

It was a charade, armed her critics and opponents handsomely, and once again illustrated the establishment-left’s failure to understand the hopelessness of identity politics.

Following the peculiar and embarrassing events on budget day, the public shifted their focus from the fluff of polite coverage to genuine, permissible anger. Here her decisions, taken in the past financial year, including the scrapping of winter fuel payments for vulnerable pensioners and imposing taxes on family farms, emerged as particularly uncaring in the context of a stuttering economy, defined by higher inflation, job losses, and stunted growth, with businesses and farmers warning of closures and reduced investment.

Stinker

Not 48 hours into 2026, Reeves came out with a stinker. Posting on X, she referenced the performance of the FTSE 100 as an indication that all is well with the UK economy.

It was a statement from the far edges of financial illiteracy. The FTSE 100 comprises global firms who have almost zero bearing on the UK economy. The FTSE 250 is a closer measurement, but it is underperforming, forcing her to say nothing – which would have been acceptable terms. Critics immediately suggested that such obvious garbage is unbecoming of a chancellor, and that she should delete it or make a statement confessing to the erroneous parallel, but that – in light of her previous behaviour – is unlikely.

The UK economy used to present itself to the world as the model of sophisticated upward mobility with checks and balances other countries dreamed about possessing. The trick to maintaining this prize was selecting the right people to manage, advise, critique, and counsel.

But in 2021, the Labour government decided that it would ignore these demonstrably successful criteria and appoint a woman who was previously an economist at the Bank of England – an institution drowning in DEI ideology and consistently failing in its mandated task of inflation targeting.

Had people known then that the same woman – an MP for Leeds West and Pudsey called Rachel Reeves – who had her parliamentary credit card suspended in 2015 for wild spending would be positioned in the second most important role in government, they would have in all likelihood kicked up a fuss.

Countering claims that Reeves is unlikely to last the party’s term to mid-2029 are the realities of DEI-obsessed politicians: they do not resign easily. They like the idea of power, irrespective of whether they actually have any, which makes them difficult to unseat.

Unless a scandal emerges that rivals events currently unfolding in Minnesota, which have prompted the end of the incumbent governor’s career, it is very difficult to see Reeves leaving. Which gives the UK another three years and some to listen to excuses about “bond vigilantes” or even just “men” whenever she’s held to account for something that is so tragically failing under her authority.