Rachel Reeves lied on her CV was not an “Economist”

[Disappointedagain22]

AIBU - it’s OK to lie to get ahead

AINBU - it’s bad RReeves very Publicly lied about her prior work. We are right to feel annoyed by this lie.

saw this headline and am feeling really disappointed. Think Rachel Reeves needs to tell public exactly her job title.
She changed job title from Economist, to “Retail Banking”
An Economist at a Bank, is a clear and specific job, it’s a economic research position. A good experience for her current position.

”Retail Banking” - is not a job title … she could have been doing anything in a branch from Bank Teller, to Branch manager, or working in back office operations putting bank notes in the plastic bags or in HR.

Nope, 10 year gilts back to more or less where they were and changes to the FTSE are all down to money shifting to the USA.

Many business leaders support what she has done, which is to balance the books on actually fund things like PO & Blood scandals, pay for nurses and of course find the money to fund Hunts vengeful NI cut, done to try and screw up Labour... or rather the UK ie us.

On the other hand, all you seem to be able to do is make up stuff.

🙄

Do bear in mind that one of the two sources quoted on here thinks Meghan Markle is responsible for the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I agree. 'Caring and kind' depends who you are and whether you've had a WFA cut or a farmer protesting and also even if the pp thinks it's the case it won't help if growth doesn't change upwards since the last quarter.

The 'difficult decisions' won't feel very caring and kind then

Okay, thanks to a couple if POs for getting me to check. I did get the statistic wrong but the correct one is no cause for joy.

According to the report GDP - International Comparisons: Key Economic Indicators published yesterday (15 Nov) and available on the website at the Houses of Commons Library, as of the end of Q3 (30 Sept I believe) the UK is the 2nd slowest country in the G7 to recover from the pandemic, with a GDP just 3% above 2019 levels. The worst is Germany which as we know has had profound problems recently. We OTOH have just been slogging along at the bottom for years.

We were doing better in the first half of the year

The UK economy grew by 0.7% in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024 compared with the previous quarter. Monthly GDP data for April and May suggests a similar rate of growth can be expected in Q2 2024.

This marks the strongest period of GDP growth since the immediate recovery from the pandemic in 2021 and early 2022.

From half way through the economy stagnated, the only change was the GE

So Reeves and Starmer say 'it's not good enough', their current growth won't be good enough to meet the 'fastest G7' claim, but will also be difficult for spending. Not sure who they're aiming the it's not good enough line at, but it's really in their remit, not anyone else.

The markets did not react negatively to the Budget. That’s factually incorrect.

Utterly ridiculous to make a comparison in any case to the political commentary on a Budget and what is universally considered an economic catastrophe under Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwartang. You do get that economics is a discipline? That’s “the markets” isn’t just the man that sells you fish saying he doesn’t like something. The Budget wasn’t even been particularly politically unpopular compared to say the early days of the coalition (the “omnitaxshambles” or Gordon Browns last Budget).

True. It is in the Express and the Torygraph and I understand GB News is covering it.

They can try to smear all they like. She's going to remain as Chancellor.

I actually don't like Reeves, but this is ridiculous.

This started off on the Guido Fawkes website (conservative blogger) along with some entertaining links about how she liked to exaggerate her chess playing skills. They must have got under her skin (and there will have been pressure from spads in the Labour Party to try to squash the story) for her to have needed to edit her profile.

order-order.com/2024/10/24/rachel-reeves-bank-economist-myth-busted/

https://order-order.com/2024/10/15/investigation-rachel-reeves-british-chess-champion-myth-busted/

surprised the CV discrepancies took so long to be picked up by the main stream media. If she hadn’t corrected her page, effectively admitting the bloggers were right, the mainstream papers may not have pursued it.

The story has been doing the rounds for three weeks. It’s actually quite funny, if it wasn’t so ridiculous that she is chancellor.

Rachel Reeves primarily serves as a spokesperson for the civil servants who are responsible for creating the actual policies.

She has a masters in Economics. She’s qualified. Don’t really give a fig if she “embroidered” her CV. She is a politician and I’ve yet to come across an honest one. I still think her policies are for shit though, but, since I am not an economist, I sincerely hope I am wrong.

A quick look at previous chancellor’s careers show that Geoffrey Howe and Alistair Darling were lawyers, Nigel Lawson was a journalist and Gordon Brown was a lecturer. I can’t remember the outroar at their previous careers.

These figures are incorporated into the overall growth of 3% since before the pandemic up to 30 Sept. Quarterly figures can bounce around for a variety of reasons. Everyone with any statistical training knows that long term growth of any system is a much more useful indicator.

That 3% is over 5 years or 20 quarters of which (at least) 19 are down to the Tories. It would be nice to simply blame the pandemic. But that doesn’t work, because every country in the G7 except Germany, which has recently been bowled over economically, is outperforming us.

vimto I think the issue is less about what qualifications and experience she had and more about the fact that she felt the need to lie about it - and indeed actively campaigned for our votes by misrepresenting her past experience to the public. That really is a bit crap and useless tbh. It shows a lack of political judgment plus poor integrity.

Edit: Every country ….. outperformed us (over the measured time period)

Some seem obsessed with her LinkedIn profile.
For those saying things like:

"misrepresent her experience in such a way that she subsequently feels it necessary to have to correct her linked in profile."

She has both Retail Banking (Halifax) AND Economist (BoE) on her LinkedIn currently. So it still correctly shows that she worked as an economist. If she updated the Halifax role at some point to reflect the area of banking she worked in there, so what? Doesn't mean she lied, but that she's reflecting she's worked in different types of banks! Not exactly an unusual thing for someone to do on LinkedIn.

I applied for jobs titled economist straight out of uni. I didn't get them but someone else straight out of uni did.

But hardly stella, 3 years to achieve v little.

GDP growth in Q3 2023 was -0.1% followed by an even larger fall in Q4 of -0.4%
Were you equally as harsh in your judgements then? no.

So a small bounce back Q1 '24 would be expected, doubtless these falls were also down to Starmer and Reeves too?

Its been less than 3 weeks since the budget, the Tories achieved negative growth after 13 years.

Well we'll see going from 'strongest period of GDP growth since the immediate recovery from the pandemic in 2021 and early 2022.' to stagnation won't be good for Reeves or Starmer. I think even they said 'it's not good enough', aimed at themselves presumably.

poetryandwine
what do you think of Margaret Thatcher’s claims to have been a scientist, based on her UG degree in Chemistry (like RR’s PPE degree, from Oxford) and her work for an ice cream manufacturer?

Thatcher also worked as a research scientist in the plastics industry;

https://www.plasticstoday.com/plastics-processing/before-she-was-the-iron-lady-thatcher-worked-in-plastics

Nonsense. Politicians set directions, policies and priorities, civil servants create plans based on those and the politicians select from their proposed plans using their advice on economic impacts. It is the politicians who decide to put up minimum wage, employers NI, remove WFA or target farmers, not civil servants.

A few years immediately post graduation doing an early-career economic job might make it easier for the civil servants to explain the impact to you but they should be capable of explaining the impact to any reasonably intelligent politician. The bigger problem is career politicians understanding what life is like outside their political bubble.

It was negative growth, by some margin, in the preceding 2 quarters, something you seem keen to minimise.

That information was from Robert Jenrick who I wouldn't trust to tell the truth about anything..

It’s flatlined in the second half of the year. That’s the problematic part for Reeves and Starmer as most of their pledges rest on growth.

The Guardian 2013

Hotcourses' sale to Inflexion would propel [Jeremy Hunt] into the ranks of most successful entrepreneurs in the Commons.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/08/jeremy-hunt-17m-hotcourses-sale-inflexion