Rachel Reeves’s “implausible” CV throws up multiple questions; a UK-based financial expert has warned as he declared we “need answers”.

Bob Lyddon was commenting on alleged inconsistencies in the Chancellor’s professional background. Specifically, numerous media reports have highlighted that Reeves previously described herself as an economist at the Bank of England – but updated details on her LinkedIn page suggest her work primarily involved banking operations rather than economic policy analysis.

Critics have accused her of inflating her credentials, although her team states the adjustments simply clarify her role.

Mr Lyddon, the founder of Lyddon Consulting Services, who also set out his concerns in a blog published on his website, told Express.co.uk: “Reeves has a weak grasp of both time and substance, which is worrying for someone in charge of the nation’s finances.

“On timing, she has claimed that she worked for the Bank of England for a decade when it was only six years. More seriously, in her 2024 Mais Lecture, she stated ‘For a decade, the last Labour government offered stable politics alongside a stable economic environment’.”

This would cover the ten-year period from Labour’s election in May 1997 until the first crash of a Northern former building society – Northern Rock – in August 2007, Mr Lyddon pointed out.

He continued: “Labour were in power for thirteen years, not ten, from 1997 until 2010, and their final three were the Great British Financial Crisis where everything went to pot.”

It was at this point that “substance veers away from reality”, Mr Lyddon suggested.

He explained: “It is one thing to gloss over mistakes, another to try to erase them from the historical record.

“It is as if the Great British Financial Crisis never happened. That is one where several high-growth Northern building societies – Northern Rock, Alliance & Leicester, and Bradford & Bingley – went under during the final three years of Labour’s previous term of office, followed by two huge Scottish banks – Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax-Bank of Scotland (which was a building society as well).”

These were what Mr Lyddon dubbed Labour’s financial services “unicorns” which were based in Labour constituencies and “run by such titans of value-creation as Adam Applegarth, Fred Goodwin, James Crosby and Andy Hornsby”.

He added: “Until they all went bust and tens of billions of pounds of taxpayer money had to be mobilised – by a Labour chancellor while Labour was still in power – to steady the ship. £17bn of taxpayer money had to be pumped into Lloyds after it had swallowed Halifax-Bank of Scotland for reasons that remain obscure.”

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, Labour had also “curated the diagnosis of what went wrong”, seeking to pin the blame on globalisation, the United States and the City of London without accepting any for themselves, Mr Lyddon claimed.

He said: “This distraction technique has been so successful that Reeves seems to have distracted herself.

“But then who would not want to distance themselves from a senior role at Halifax-Bank of Scotland in which her economic analysis fuelled the megalomania of the senior executives?”

Mr Lyddon conceded that it was impossible to be sure what Ms Reeves had actually done because her analysis outputs were not in the public domain.

However, he stressed: “It is implausible, though, that Halifax-Bank of Scotland would have hired a Bank of England economist with a PPE degree from Oxford (albeit only a Class 2.1) and put her into dealing with mortgage complaints.

“This speaks of someone who is unrepentant of the Great British Financial Crash, and of its impact on taxpayers and the nation’s finances, and who is desperate that things should pick up where they left off – just before depositors had to queue round the block to get their money out of Northern Rock.”

Mr Lyddon emphasised: “We do now know her degree class from Oxford – a 2.1 in a joint honours degree rather than the First in Economics that would be expected of a ‘serious economist’.

“But we still need some answers about her supposed ‘Master’s degree’ from the London School of Economics, obtained while she was in full-time employment at the Bank of England and partially when she was overseas. We need answers to that and a whole lot more.”

Most Popular Comments

“There can be little doubt that Ms Reeves actually believes that she is an Economist when in reality she isn’t. There is a word for this …” 81

“Actually she fits in very well with the Head of the team who got £100,000 in grifts …” 50

“Also whilst working at HBOS in retail banking ( so not an Economist ) Theeves in …” 44

JOIN THE DEBATE

Since becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer in July 2024, Rachel Reeves has prioritised investment-driven policies to rebuild the economy. She launched a £7.3 billion National Wealth Fund aimed at decarbonising heavy industries and announced significant funding increases in healthcare, education, and housing in her October budget. Among the notable measures was a 6.7% increase in the national minimum wage and allocations for affordable housing and school rebuilding projects. Reeves also appointed a “Covid corruption commissioner” to recover misused public funds from pandemic-related fraud.​

However, Reeves has faced criticism on several fronts. Her decision to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners not receiving pension credits sparked backlash, as did continued freezes on fuel duty, which disappointed environmentalists. Opposition figures labelled her budget’s tax increases on various sectors as broken promises.

Moreover, her approach to tackling benefit fraud by accessing claimants’ bank accounts has raised concerns about privacy and fairness.

The controversy over her CV has reignited broader debates about transparency among politicians and the scrutiny of their public narratives.

Express.co.uk has contacted Ms Reeves via the Foreign Office and her Parliamentary Office for comment.