Pressure grows on Rachel Reeves to explain ‘fake claims’ on CV

25 comments

1. If even the Chancellor of the Exchequer needs to lie on their CV to get a job, then that’s proof enough that the modern job market/job selection methodology is completely fucked.

2. She’s got a masters degree in economics. I don’t think working six years in IT support detracts from that.

3. Funny how they never mentioned Kwasi Kwarteng’s complete lack of economics experience as chancellor. Or Jeremy Hunts. Or Nadhim Zahawi. Rishi was obviously an investment banker, as was Sajid Javid (although his position and experience at various places was also unclear) but what about George Osborne?

4. Let’s not forget her ‘book’ that was copy and pasted from wikipedia

5. How a tory can accuse anyone of being “economical with the truth” with a straight face, I’ll never know.

6. She is a politician.

   Required experience: None.

   Required qualifications: None.

7. “Economist” isn’t a regulated profession or even a restricted job title. She had a masters in economics, she did a job that presumably took advantage of skills learned during that degree. It’s a fudge but really not a big issue.

   This is the Robbie Gibb school of balance- all scandals are exactly the same size and just as bad as each other. Especially when Labour do small ones and the Conservatives big ones.

8. She lied a decade ago on her CV. We don’t require an economist background to be chancellor the same we don’t require a doctor to be head of health. Feels like a very non story

9. How fragile is the support in this government if it can be shaken by LinkedIn, really?

10. Not just the fake claim she said she was an Economist at HBOS when in fact she was just working in the complaints department. She was involved with dodgy expenses with others signing each others off, she was also lying when there about dentist/doctor appointments to actually go do Labour party stuff. Then on top she had her parliamentary debit/credit card taken off her for mis-use.

    We want this kind of lying person as.chancellor?!? WTF! Labour voters should hang their head in shame!

11. What I find interesting is how much of a massive and obvious step down it was to go from an Economist at the Bank of England to working in retail banking at HBOS on the complaints team. That makes absolutely no sense. I don’t see how or why anyone would make that move.

12. This is incredibly small potatoes for a political “scandal”. I mean, imagine how many of these headlines would be running on an hourly basis if someone like Boris Johnson ever got to be PM.

13. “Pressure grows” says the only headline mentioning it xD

14. It appears she has been liberal with the truth on multiple occasions.

    If so she has to resign. She’s the chancellor for goodness sake, you can’t lie about your employment history and experience.

15. The old fake CV scandal. It’s nice that we’re back to this level of scandal. 

16. I’m at Cambridge and actually had quite a bit of technical experience before coming here because I did an apprenticeship-like scheme.

    In my first year I was unpleasantly surprised when none of the internships I applied to gave me an offer, while my peers (who I knew could barely write code) were getting prestigious internships at tech companies…

    ..in casual conversation they later all told me they straight up lied on their CV – and it worked!

    Oxbridge breeds a huge culture of cheating/lying and rewards it. It explains a lot of the current issues with our politics.

17. Who else is reading this comments section and wondering how different it would be if this article was on a tory chancellor?

18. Archive link : https://archive.ph/7xlwx

    Rachel Reeves came under increasing pressure to explain her CV on Sunday after it emerged that she used a false claim to win her seat as an MP.
    During the chancellor’s successful campaign for Leeds West in 2010, she told voters she had worked “as an economist … at Halifax Bank of Scotland”, using the experience to back up her claim that she had “economic expertise”.
    But last week Reeves’s team admitted she had worked in retail banking at Halifax, leading the Conservatives to accuse her of a “brazen lie” and being “economical with the truth”. Her LinkedIn page, which had described her as an economist at Halifax, part of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was changed last week.
    She in fact held a mid-ranking position in a support department at the bank covering administration and IT matters, according to the blog site Guido Fawkes, which first reported the story. Separately, The Sunday Telegraph reported that Reeves has been accused of exaggerating the length of her service working at the Bank of England.
    In an interview with Stylist magazine in 2021, she said she had worked for the Bank for “a decade” and “loved it”. In fact she had worked there for six years, and one of those was spent studying for a master’s degree at the London School of Economics.
    In a profile of Reeves and others hoping to enter parliament in the Guardian in 2009, she was described as “an analyst for one of the recapitalised banks, Lloyds Banking Group”. She joked: “I guess you could say that, moving from banking, I am one of the few people entering politics to be going to a more popular profession.”
    Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said the claim that she worked for the Bank of England was “another brazen lie”. “It’s one rule for her, another for everyone else,” he said, suggesting that members of the public might lose their jobs if they lied on a CV.
    In reference to her Halifax bank claim, he added: “Reeves said she was an economist. Turns out she’s just economical with the truth.”
    Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform party, said: “All of my suspicions about Rachel Reeves have been confirmed. She doesn’t really seem to understand basic economics and her budget was contradictory. She has told anyone who will listen for years that she was an economist, but we can now see that she ordered the paperclips instead.”
    The growing questions come as the Labour government fights a backlash against Reeves’s budget from businesses hit by her £25 billion hike to national insurance, and family farmers, who may now have to pay inheritance tax to pass their businesses on to their children.
    Critics have claimed the tax hike on farms could harm Britain’s food security, and that increasing taxes on employment will raise prices and damage growth. The budget has renewed scrutiny on the chancellor and the claims she has made about her background.
    Reeves’s own LinkedIn page lists a six-year period of service at the Bank of England from September 2000 to December 2006. In that time she worked in the international “economic analysis division” from 2000 to 2002, her first job after her undergraduate degree. She then worked for the British embassy in Washington DC, as part of the “second secretary economic division”, from 2002 until the middle of 2003.
    From September 2003 to June 2004, she studied for a masters degree in economics at LSE. Then from 2004 until 2006, she was part of the Bank’s structural economic analysis division. She was just 27 when she left the Bank, suggesting she was employed as an economist in relatively junior roles.
    She then worked for three years at the Halifax bank, running a small administrative complaints department that also dealt with IT matters. In May 2010 she became MP for Leeds West and Pudsey.
    In October last year, Reeves’s book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, was found to include reproduced material from online blogs, Wikipedia, The Guardian and a foreword by a Labour MP without acknowledging the sources. “When factual sentences were taken from primary sources, they should have been rewritten and properly referenced,” her publisher told The Financial Times. “We acknowledge this did not happen in every case.”
    Some text about women economists was “lifted wholesale from Wikipedia”, the investigation found. Reeves denied plagiarism, saying they were “inadvertent mistakes”.
    A Treasury source said Reeves “worked in retail banking covering various areas drawing on her background as an economist. Her LinkedIn has been updated to reflect that”.

19. I’m waiting for another, ‘sorry I misspoke’ gem.

    Liars, the fucking lot of ’em.

20. Labour, the party that had a minister for snow waaay back when ever it was.

    I shit you not, a minister for snow.

21. “masterminded the Arab Spring”

    “jet skiied across Lake Geneva with a duck named Percy”

22. If you pair up a politician with a CV…what do you expect? Aren’t all CV’s mostly lies anyway? Aren’t all politicans mostly liars anyway?

23. I think anyone caught lying on their CV should be forced to take a training course in honesty or else have their benefits removed.

24. Funny how these posers get top jobs that require no experience or Qualifications.

    As a lorry driver, I had an HGV licence, a lorry mounted crane certificate, and a Fork truck permit. all issued by Govt agencies!

    Obviously it’s more important to ensure HGV drivers don’t hurt anyone, while the Chancellor of The Exchequer is OK to crash the Economy!

25. Its so funny seeing how many people are jumping to defend the chancellor lying on their CV. How is this the case?

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