LONDON: Rachel Reeves became Britain’s first female finance minister on Friday (Jul 4), and the one-time junior chess champion’s opening gambit will be to try to spur growth without sacrificing the party’s newly minted image of fiscal responsibility.
A former Bank of England economist, Reeves, 45, was tasked in opposition with mending relations with the business community that were strained under left-wing former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and pitching to voters that the party could be trusted with their money.
Appointed as Labour’s finance policy chief in 2021 after a tricky start to new prime minister Keir Starmer’s leadership, she has become synonymous with his approach of putting pragmatism ahead of ideology and facing down those on the left who want a fiscally looser approach.
With Labour’s dominant election victory confirmed on Friday morning, she will now have to navigate a tricky fiscal picture and boost growth quickly if promised increases in investment are to be delivered without tax rises.
She said it was the “honour of my life” and a “historic responsibility” to be the first woman to be appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, as Britain’s top economics and finance policymaker is titled.
“We’ve waited a long time to have the chance to serve our country. We have got a credible plan now to deliver the change the country needs. Growing our economy is at the heart of doing that,” Reeves told reporters on the sidelines of the party’s manifesto launch in Manchester.
“The opportunity to be Britain’s first female chancellor of the exchequer – that would give me immense pride, but also give me a huge responsibility: to pass on, to our daughters and our granddaughters, a fairer society. That’s what I’m determined to do”.
