Rachel Reeves (Image: Getty)
Rachel Reeves has a big problem on her hands.
Not the fact that economists have sounded the alarm over a UK recession because Britain’s economy is reeling from the effects of her tax-raising Budget.
Nor that she is facing the wrath of millions of pensioners who have had their snatched away from them by the Chancellor.
And not because farmers across the country are furious at her for clobbering them with a 20% inheritance tax hike.
No, Reeves’s big problem is one of trust.
This week she has come under fire for apparently embellishing her CV.
The Chancellor has previously said she worked as an economist at Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) before entering politics.
However, her profile on the networking site LinkedIn has been changed to say the role at HBOS was in retail banking.
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Reeves worked as an economist for the Bank of England before joining HBOS and in a 2011 interview she is described as working for HBOS’s retail division.
In the same year, the biography on her Labour web page said: “Rachel spent her professional career as an economist working for the Bank of England, the British Embassy in Washington and at Halifax Bank of Scotland.”
The issue came under the spotlight during Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday when it was raised by Tory MPs Graham Stuart and Alex Burghart and Reform UK’s Lee Anderson.
Stuart referenced recent cases where people had got into trouble for lying about their experience and achievements.
In June, Nick Adderly, the chief constable of Northamptonshire Police was sacked for exaggerating his naval rank and length of service.
And last month, a woman was jailed for five years after lying about her experience and qualifications to get a job as a senior nurse in a unit for sick and premature babies.
The questions continued after the Commons session, as reporters sought to put the prime minister’s official spokeswoman on the spot.
Asked if Sir Keir expected ministers to tell the truth on their CVs, she said the row “relates to the chancellor’s time before she was the chancellor”.
Questions about the Chancellor’s integrity are awkward for the PM.
And it’s not the first time she has been accused of misleading the public.
Last month accused the Chancellor of “fiddling the figures”.
He said Ms Reeves specifically told the British public that she wouldn’t change the country’s debt target because she didn’t want to “fiddle the figures to get better results”.
Mr Sunak said: “She has gone back on her word and fiddled the figures so that she can borrow billions more.
“Broken promise after broken promise, and working people will pay the price.”
And during this summers’ election campaign, Reeves back Sir when he said Labour’s plans were “fully-costed, fully-funded”.
“They do not involve tax rises over and above the ones that we’ve set out in,” he added.
But during her budget Reeves set out a series of hikes including an increase in the amount of national insurance employers pay and the point at which it kicks in to claw in £25 billion.
And let’s not forget the time when Reeves faced ridicule in 2023 after it emerged some passages of her new book were lifted from other sources without acknowledgement.
It was reported at the time that her book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, reproduced material from websites including Wikipedia.
Ms Reeves confessed to the some sentences “were not properly referenced” and this would be corrected in future reprints.
However, her team denied claims of plagiarism.
Conservative MPs have since branded her the “copy and paste chancellor”.
Trust is a sought-after commodity in politics, particularly for someone in such a high-profile position.
Narratives tend to have a habit of sticking.
With the effects of last month’s bombshell set to resonate for a very long time to come, Reeves could end up losing the battle to win back public trust.