Torsten Bell

Spear’s Review

Elected an MP in 2024, Torsten Bell had already made a name running the Resolution Foundation, widely regarded as the most influential think tank on the left in the UK.

The Swansea West MP may well have hoped that his 2024 book, Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back, could be for Sir Keir Starmer what Will Hutton’s 1996 era-defining tome, The State We’re In, was for the New Labour mission. We’ll find out, because, having been appointed to ailing Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Treasury team as a junior minister in January 2025 (and also as a pensions minister), the half-Swedish Bell is now in a position to make change happen. 

Already tipped as a future chancellor, Bell, 43, is known to favour pension reform (scrapping the ‘triple lock’) and taxing wealth, notably through IHT, capital gains and stamp duty, although not a ‘wealth tax’ itself. 

‘A dose of Torstenomics is the only thing that can give us hope,’ the BBC’s Amol Rajan has said. Presumably Reeves agrees. 

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