Rachel Reeves’s book rocked by plagiarism claims

Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but has Rachel Reeves taken that too far? The Financial Times today reports that the shadow chancellor’s new book ‘has been found to contain examples of apparent plagiarism,’ including ‘reproduced material’ from sources such as Wikipedia, the Guardian and, er, Reeves’s own front bench colleague Hilary Benn. The FT claims to have found at least 20 instances of plagiarism, though Reeves’s spokesman has denied this was deliberate: ‘these were inadvertent mistakes and will be rectified in future reprints’. 

Her publisher Basic Books has now admitted blame: ‘When factual sentences were taken from primary sources, they should have been rewritten and properly referenced. We acknowledge this did not happen in every case.’ The FT reports that Reeves’s book also included reworked paragraphs and sentences where details including names and adjectives had been swapped around but the bulk of the material remained unchanged. The paper adds that the ‘book credits researchers who were involved in the project: it is thought they were involved in factual research and compiling the bibliography.’