Rachel Reeves

Spear’s Review

The first female chancellor in the Treasury’s 800-year history, Rachel Reeves was central to Sir Keir Starmer’s 2024 electoral campaign, preaching a message of sound management of the economy and a new ‘fiscal lock’ law announced in the King’s Speech. The law will allow the Office for Budget Responsibility to conduct its own independent assessments of any budgetary commitments representing more than 1 per cent of the UK’s GDP.  

After studying philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford – where, she once revealed, her contemporaries gave her a framed portrait of Gordon Brown because of ‘how much I loved the Treasury’ – Reeves cut her teeth as an economist working at the Bank of England and in the mortgages team of HBOS.

Now in the driver’s seat as chancellor, the MP for Leeds West and Pudsey has already introduced fresh tax rules targeting non-doms, private schools and private equity executives. This has left many in the world of private wealth wondering just how much further she and her colleagues could go…