Rachel Reeves: ‘Attack is the best form of defence’

‘Attack is the best form of defence,’ declares Rachel Reeves, sitting in a block purple dress in her office in parliament. The shadow chancellor is discussing what lessons for politics she learnt from chess. She was the British girls’ champion at the age of 14. ‘Thinking ahead. Trying to think what your opponent might do – and how you would respond to that. I was a very aggressive chess player: attack, attack, attack. All the time!’

She has kept such tactics since she entered politics, having previously been an economist at the Bank of England. Her early call for a windfall tax saw her named ‘Chancellor of the Year’ at The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards last month, on the grounds that, in the year of four Tory chancellors, her policies had the most intellectual influence. The award hangs behind her desk.

The idea, she says, struck her long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.