To find Rachel Reeves an irritating pain in the neck

I think it’s obvious that people will have different views about her and her policies. Some will agree and some not, and that’s fine.

However she needs to be judged by the same standards and measures as a male chancellor. I’m not convinced that anyone would call a man they disagreed with “an irritating pain in the neck”.

All this talk about her qualifications and competence also strikes me as misogynistic- she’s clearly at least as qualified as many other chancellors. As others have said, it’s a mainly political role anyway.

Fine disagree with the policies, but don’t sink into misogyny.

”Irritating” is often a word people use about women who dare to speak up or have their own opinions.

Genuine apologies-actually googled it and you're right. My bad.

By Labour’s own pledges when not halving growth, wiping out headroom and resulting in cuts.

Actually there are many of us who do have a better grasp of economics.
Firstly from studying it then running my own company for 36 years.

Sadly there’s hardly any politicians who have any experience of running a business or the private sector as a whole.

I loathe that woman. She couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.

You seem to want to blame everything on anyone but the Chancellor. She has delivered a disastrous budget and has now had to take from the disabled to cover the shortfall. Reeves is a disaster.

Absolutely this. It’s just so basic and fundamental.

You genuinely have no idea what you are talking about 🙄

Nor can you grow an economy where 1 in 5 adults are CHOOSING not to work.

I think it's really insulting to say she doesn't have a grasp of economics like any of you would know more!!

Yes ok, I do expect she has and should have oversight of the detail.

But my point is that it's not HER on her own making decisions. They have teams of people and draw on experts from private and public sector. Like CFOs don't do all the finance work of a company.

Nail on the head. She's obsessed with political ideology and envy politics.

Wrong. She's only competent if she's making decisions that benefit the country. She has no credentials whatsoever for the role she's in and not even a basic understanding of economics. She's literally fighting for survival.

You don't need to be a real economist to know that you can't grow the economy by hobbling business.

You need to be an ideologically fuelled innumerate.

Maybe you are under estimating the capability of your investment banking colleagues?
Would love to know what credentials you would like to see in a Chancellor. Education and experience.

Perhaps she'd be better if she did do a bit of number crunching herself? It may help her avoid making mistakes!

But Phil Hammond got ridiculed and called "Spreadsheet Phil" as he was reported to actually want to do the number crunching of the options he was presented with and the decisions he made.

I'd rather have a Chancellor who checked things out for themselves, especially to think about the "unforeseen" consequences that they always claim, which were utterly foreseeable by most other people with half a brain!

I've just watched a conservative stuttering to answer the question that they had pledged to make double the level of cuts that labour have made in the election and what would he have been cutting.

But that’s not how appointing the cabinet works. They can’t go out and recruit the most qualified person for the job, it’s not an open market. Look at all the previous Chancellors, would you say that have the correct CV for the job? Or any other cabinet position for that matter.

I'm not a Labour bot I'm afraid....

People just see the situation in different ways.

She's only competent if she's giving tax breaks and more benefits right???

Also, when people say she's not experienced enough to manage the country's money (which she is), do you think she sits at work with a big old spreadsheet totting things up and coming up with a plan?
It's largely a political role with advisors from all sorts of backgrounds that do the analysis and come up with proposals. Her role is largely political.

@edwinbear who do you think was a good chancellor?

She doesn't have the credentials. I work with dozens of people with Oxford PPE degrees and Masters in Economics (I work in investment banking). My own degree is in economics, neither me, nor my colleagues are in any way capable of being Chancellor. Having a theoretical knowledge of economics is one thing, but as she's demonstrated, putting it into practice successfully is an entirely different matter. She has no understanding whatsoever how to put the economic theory she's studied, to good use. She has no experience or understanding of business of the private sector at all.

Nope I think she is as competent as any other Chancellor and is getting on with making tough decisions.

People don't like her because she is making tough decisions.

Those are only tough because of the stupid combination of the tories, brexit, covid and Ukraine war. And now Trump edging us to actual war.

Of course she isn't going to shower people with extra benefit money. There isn't any. The nature of the macroeconomic and political environment has changed since July, so I can also understand why Labours approach has changed.

finally. Why should taxpayers pay more and more to prop up more and more people? If Labour are making cuts surely it's because there isn't any option.

Yes - she's dangerously incompetent and leading the country into rapid decline and another wave of austerity. The sooner she's gone the better.

Exactly. When have previous Chancellors had their LinkedIn CV’s scraped over by the press to see if they have the qualifications for the job?? Very few of the Chancellors over the past 20 years have had any sort of careers in finance. But they happened to do it to the first female Chancellor? And then come up with a misogynistic nickname. Lovely.