Another day, and I am shocked to report, another lie concerning Rachel Reeves. There is emerging an interesting trait in all these porkies; they are all designed to show she is better qualified than she actually is.
This may not sound much but in her Who’s Who Entry (in her case Who Was Who) she is listed as a contributor to the enormously prestigious Journal of Political Economy. It’s not on my summer beach reading list but if you are in the game of adding up for a living it really means something.
But of course, as with everything connected with Rachel from Accounts, it has turned out not to be true. In fact she had published one single article in the much more modest publication, the European Journal of Political Economy. I am told it’s the equivalent of saying you went to the University of Oxford and in fact you went to Oxford Brookes.
Rachel Reeves’ embellishment on her CV comes very close to fraud.
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The porkie was spotted by Sir Richard Barnett, emeritus professor at the University of Ulster, who helpfully dropped a line to the letters page of The Times pointing it out. He said the two journals were ‘’chalk and cheese’’ and that any academic economist would know the difference.
Sir Richard makes a good point about the difference between the two academic journals when he says; ‘’One is world leading. It’s where economists aspire to publish and it’s incredibly competitive to get it published in the journal. If you are seeking an academic post or a professorship where you have published matters as much as what you’ve published.’’
It seems Reeves is constantly trying to make herself seem more important in her world. Which would explain her biggest clanger which was to say that she had been at the Bank of England for ‘’nearly’’ a decade.
Errr. No she hadn’t. She had been there for just over five years. If she couldn’t tell the difference between a 5 and 10 she should not be in charge of the Treasury. CVs are important. They can win you jobs and they can lose you jobs.
Everybody polishes up their CV a little to make them look more important than they were. I was either an important junior journalist at the South East London Mercury or the bacon butty runner depending how you looked at me.
But to double the amount of time you spent at a prestigious establishment like the Bank of England comes very close to fraud. I suspect if you tried that at Barclays you would be shown the door pretty smartly. Or never be invited through the door.
The Chancellor has deceived voters with both her CV and her taxation policies.
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There is still hanging around Reeves the smell of an investigation into her expenses with the suggestion that she and two of her bosses were buying each other goodies – champagne and the like – and putting them on the HBOS expense account.
Reeves has denied the allegations. She said the first she knew about it was when the BBC came to her saying they had seen and checked out a whistleblower’s analysis and there were questions to answer.
She had a similar pushback when the question of her false claim in Who’s Who. Her allies said there was no record of how the entry had come to be made or who had approved the description of her publication record.
I’m in Who’s Who and they were interested in me because I was the Editor of The Sun. I filled in their little form myself. Very simple, very straightforward.
I would have thought I was at least as busy, and probably a darned sight more busy, than Ms Reeves and therefore it is puzzling for her to claim that she had no idea who filled in the details of her career.
Like the Bank of England CV, like the possible expenses scandal and now how the economic journals got mixed up, it’s all a mystery to Reeves.
What it isn’t a mystery to the voter is that in her professional life she has lied to the general public. She claimed taxes wouldn’t go up and promptly put them up by £40billion.
So, the best thing to do is believe the worst of her and she won’t let you down.