Why do jokes about Rachel Reeves’s CV persist? One explanation is simple: it’s funny. The Chancellor’s public persona is strait-laced and orderly; the idea of her doing something slightly naughty and gilding her CV is good material for comedy.
But is that all? Reeves’s tweaks to her LinkedIn profile are, bluntly, trivial. They’re also minor compared to the airbrushing some politicians carry out on their personal histories. You might have forgotten a man called Rishi Sunak, but when he became Chancellor then PM, how much fuss was made of the fact that he had deleted whole jobs from his CV? Sunak vanished several years at Goldman Sachs and the TCI hedge fund from his history.
A woman changes a couple of words on her CV and all hell breaks loose
Meanwhile, throw a stone in SW1A and you’ll hit three people who haven’t been 100 per cent transparent about their professional history. I’ve lost count of the number of MPs I’ve known who have deleted jobs in public affairs and PR from their records. Yet the story that sticks is that Rachel Reeves described herself as an economist while she worked for Halifax Bank of Scotland, then changed her LinkedIn page to say that she was actually working in customer services.
In some corners of the internet, this is grand deception, official deceit on a par with concealing the truth about who really killed JFK. Listen to some of Reeves’ most passionate critics and you’ll hear demands that she resign because she misled the electorate. Apparently if voters in Leeds had seen ‘customer services’ on her CV rather than ‘economist’ they’d never have returned her to parliament.
Of course, there’s politics at work here. Tory spinners have spotted an opportunity to promote a story that nags away at a chancellor who is very important to the Labour government and who is – inevitably – battling to sell unpopular Budget choices.
But is there something more than politics? Some of Reeves’ colleagues wonder if a female politician is getting more critical attention than a man might in similar circumstances.
Reeves is the first female chancellor, the leading politician in a world of economics that is still overwhelmingly male. Do some people find it hard to accept a woman as credible in matters of finance and economics?
I won’t attempt to answer that question. Instead, I’d invite readers to consider another story about a politician who has faced questions about honesty over their life before parliament.
James McMurdock, the Reform MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, was elected in July. Before his election, he did not tell his voters something significant about his past: he was imprisoned for assaulting a woman. McMurdock was convicted of assault and spent 21 days in a young offenders’ institution after pleading guilty to assaulting his girlfriend by kicking her ‘around four times’. He has been quoted describing his violent crime as a ‘teenage indiscretion’ but, thanks to reporting by the Times, the full details are now known.
McMurdock’s conviction was not known to the electorate before his election, though. He won his seat by 98 votes. That majority means that if just 49 of his supporters had instead voted for his closest rival, he would not be an MP today.
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but some of the people who have been defending James McMurdock for failing to disclose his assault conviction and demand ‘Christian’ forgiveness for his crime are also among those shouting most loudly about Rachel Reeves’ apparently unpardonable sin over her LinkedIn page. Meanwhile, some critics who have been keen to discuss the issues of high principle and probity at stake over the Chancellor’s biography haven’t found the time to discuss an MP who decided not the tell voters he pushed his girlfriend to the ground and kicked her.
I’m sure the jokes about Rachel Reeves’s CV won’t go away, and many people will continue to laugh along with them. But when I hear them, I can’t help thinking about James McMurdock too, and what the stories of two MPs and their histories tell us about politics and culture today.
A woman changes a couple of words on her CV and all hell breaks loose. A man conceals the fact that he was jailed for assaulting a woman and other men rush to defend him.
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