SLR: I’ve finally found the world’s worst politician ever - the chancellor turning the UK’s gold standard into dust
Key topics:
Reeves’ rise marked by exaggerations and disputed personal claims
Budget errors and leaks undermine UK financial credibility
UK’s long-held fiscal reputation now at serious risk
Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.
Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.
If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.
Sometime in 2023 a woman with a stern expression and short jet-black hair appeared on the cover of a newspaper supplement.
Now ten years ago, I would have told you without bothering to read: that’s a dominatrix who had seen sunnier climates in her time, but it actually was the incoming Chancellor of the Exchequer, a woman called Rachel Reeves.
Some months later I was in France staying with a friend who was once a permanent undersecretary in the civil service. We were talking about the inevitability of the Labour party winning the general election mere months away.
“Business leaders stopped talking to Conservatives a while back,” he said. “They went to Labour, but were so unimpressed by what they saw and heard that they actually went back to the Conservatives, despite them not having a hope of winning.”
Seeing the newspaper supplement was actually your cue to gap it. Cash in. Call your lawyer for advice. Rent a joint in Cape Town until you find a more permanent residence. Fashion editors are not as stupid as they sometimes appear; glamming up the prospective finance minister with sadomasochistic extensions was their way of projecting: “Oops, we’re in a bit of trouble, and someone is coming to punish us”.
Read more:
So it came to pass that in 2024, Labour won the general election and Rachel assumed the address of 11 Downing Street, next to the Prime Minister’s office and residence.
It was the woman stuff that set folk off immediately. Rachel hit the ground explaining that she was the first woman Chancellor – ever. She said it in parliament, nursery schools, hospitals, television interviews, train stations and on building sites. She would be speaking about things like the weather, or chess, and suddenly find herself struck with an urge to wedge the statement in. It was clumsy, incoherent, inappropriate and, for a country that has seen two women Prime Ministers, shameless.
Then the lies came, starting with a claim that her predecessors had left a £21.9 billion “black hole” in the economy, turning to her career as an economist which she complimented with claims about a career in retail banking. She then added “chess prodigy” to boot.
Parts of the UK, however, maintain they are not the rural Kingdom of Hlaudi Motsoeneng, so did a bit of deep-diving and discovered that many of her claims were just balls. Her career in retail banking was actually a career in the call centre servicing the retail bank’s IT division. (That same bank recently told customers who objected to its staff wearing pronoun badges to get stuffed, and quickly learned that it probably wasn’t the smartest way to inspire the sort of confidence required to hold someone’s cash). During this era, it was also discovered that when Rachel got rumbled for canvassing for the Labour party during office hours (claiming she had a “dentist appointment”), she resigned. The chess stuff? Well, she won a regional competition once, which is like being the prettiest girl in a regional English nightclub. So, congratulations.
The lies continued this last week when Rachel went and cocked another budget up (second time in a row), except this time it’s not just farmers being hammered or class warfare or the grotesque sight of a mediocre civil servant being able to purchase a Gulf Stream on account of how Rachel has jacked his salary up. This spectacle included a leak, for which someone has already resigned: an announcement by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) late on Friday that police had arrested someone for alleged market manipulation, pig-headed defiance in the face of reality and dubious press briefings, where the government kettles its little media pets – much as the ANC does – and instructs them what to write.
It’s impossible to cock things up more. Perhaps there’s an uncontacted tribe somewhere in the vicinity of the Coral Sea whose Chancellor or Finance Minister has upset the elders with his budget ideas, so is condemned to being eaten. I wouldn’t bet on it.
I’ve spent the last week gathering memories of the worst politicians I have known. Most of these were ANC MPs, Conservative MPs, Labour MPs, but I’ve also been told off by a liberal US Senator for using the word “bushman” and had to sit through a dinner once with a Green German.
The late Tina Joemat-Pettersson had this habit of looking completely mad, then normal, then mad again, followed by a cool detachment, when I sat down with her in 2014. Much as I wanted to dislike her, she did laugh when I made a borderline joke, proving that despite layers of ANC lard and mischief and political debauchery, she was human.
Naledi Pandor was pompous and smug, with all the routines of a posh UK schoolgirl who falls in love with an IRA terrorist. However, she already got the treatment in parliament from Willie Madisha, so cancel her out. ̶̶
I saw a former Conservative MP called Anna Soubry throw a fit at a subordinate, and I sat next to Caroline Nokes, currently deputy speaker in the House of Commons. She is alleged to have once instructed a man to bite a chunk of flesh out of another man who was bothering her. She drove the assailant to the occasion.
I never met Faith Muthambi, but someone on the inside did send me a photo of her possibly drunk, rolling on the floor laughing, which I thought was sweet in a fun way.
Read more:
Rachel is worse than anyone I’ve met or can think of, chiefly because of what she’s done and is doing to a remarkable system, which could unleash demons into the lives of millions upon millions in ways that no other corrupt or underperforming or generally useless elected or non-elected official could. Measured upon what she could be instrumental in losing, there is no comparison.
That is: for the longest time the UK has been considered the gold standard of financial prudence. This impression was not lost on the markets, which subsequently permitted the country to raise debt required to build relatively cheaply – with confidence.
That priceless impression, formed of years of slog and discipline, is now in jeopardy. I can’t think anything more damaging.
*Simon Lincoln Reader grew up in Cape Town before moving to Johannesburg in 2001, where he was an energy entrepreneur until 2014. In South Africa, he wrote a weekly column for Business Day, then later Biznews.com. Today he is a partner at a London-based litigation funder, a trustee of an educational charity, and a member of the advisory board of the Free Speech Union of South Africa. He travels frequently between California, the UK, and South Africa. All on his green passport.
This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission