Blain’s Morning Porridge June 29th, 2026 – The best choice for UK chancellor is probably Rachel Reeves!
“Decisions to secure our economic future are not easy – but they are critical.”
Andy Burnham promises the UK a national reboot. Critical to his success will be his choice of chancellor, and the relationship with the financial markets. Rachel Reeves is closely associated with the failed Starmer premiership – but she knows how to do the job and has credibility with the markets. With new leadership she could prove a much better choice than other contenders.
Who will UK Prime Minister in Waiting Andy Burnham choose to be the next Chancellor the Exchequer? It’s the second most important job in the country – the role of national CFO is critical. It requires a competent politician with a grasp of finance, bonds, taxation, project management, and central banking, but it’s likely Burnham will offer the post to secure the support of political rivals with careers spent in politics rather than commerce. Will it go to Ed Miliband, the least popular minister in a very unpopular cabinet, or has it already been promised to Wes Streeting, former Health Minister, in return from him standing down his own premiership goal in return for the job?
I have a suggestion for Burnham. How about Rachel Reeves?
That would be a bold call.
I can guarantee multiple splutters into morning coffees from Tory-voting bankers and businessmen at the thought of Reeves staying in post. Britain’s first female Chancellor has been painted to the Great British Electorate as the worst guardian of the public purse on record. The front pages of the Torygraph, and tedious hours of GB News, were devoted to a host of embarrassing reveals, or how she froze grannies when she took away the winter fuel allowance, starved the nation by expecting farmers to pay taxes, and bankrupted millions of companies with higher costs while killing jobs through ill-considered tax and insurance grabs.
The mud has stuck. All her failures have been made very public and repeated ad nauseam for the past 2 years. Blitz-politics in the press and social media scored cheap but effective political points against her. The trick was to recycle stories and insults till they become the accepted truth. The “Rachel from Accounts” moniker was the killer blow. It demeaned her and was ruthlessly wielded to paint her as an incompetent woman – accompanied by the unspoken sexist inference was she was failing to do a man’s job. A nod and a wink were what it took to pull the rug from under her.
What I find hilarious is the same right-leaning media that’s so effectively hammered Reeves over her growth record, and blamed her decisions for penalising firms, wrecking businesses, workers, farmers and pensioners alike, are by-and-large the same media manipulators who promised us Brexit would be such a success. Over the last 10 years Brexit is reckoned to have cost the UK trillions, slashing growth by between 4-6% (some say 8%), cutting trade with Europe, flatlining productivity as orders collapsed, crushing UK firms with export bureaucracy, tariffs and frictions.
The ultimate laugh is how Brexit has replaced thousands of EU workers who fitted into the UK rather well with non-European migrants from elsewhere. Brexit-loving Reform voters now see the nation flooded with Moslems and Hindus, and wonder what happened to all the Polish builders and Spanish restaurant hosts? Yep. Populism has consequences.
The right-wing hates Reeves. Maybe it’s because she’s a woman. Or maybe it’s because she’s done a decent job under difficult circumstances? Her successes are acknowledged in the moderate press. The Sunday Times’ Economic’s Editor, David Smith acknowledged it on Sunday: “Rachel Reeves’s Legacy – Unpopular choices that will help her successor.”Reeves did what she said she would do – she stuck to her rules.
Above all, Reeves was dull, boring and predictable – which are exactly the virtues the bond market values above all others. The City of London may have considered Starmer ineffective, but it judged Reeves as credible. That is something Burnham could use.
Under Reeves the UK’s GDP has risen (modestly, but faster than most of Europe), the budget deficit is falling, and interest rates are lower. Despite umpteen “Torygraph” headlines assuring readers her actions would force the UK to beg for an IMF bailout, the Gilts Markets has generally given her credit for making tough political calls and sticking to the objectives on spending constraint.
In “Yes Minister” terms she made “courageous” decisions – meaning tough, difficult but correct calls likely to cost her job. She stuck to the script and stuck it out. For a moment we saw just how tough that has been when she blubbed on camera as yet another personal attack on her hit home. Reeves has had to learn how to thicken her skin.
There is no doubt the Starmer/Reeves era in Downing Street was anything but a success. It was directionless, never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, and too timid of bond markets and party opinion.
The most successful comedy acts are funny guy/straight man combos. It’s much the same in politics – you need a leader, and you need a doer.
When Labour won the 2024 General Election, what the UK needed was a Prime Minister with a plan who could lead, and a chancellor who would deliver and finance the vision. What we got was Sir Keir Starmer – a highly competent and respected lawyer who proved to be a one-man “problem factory’; endlessly dithering and fretting about problems that might occur and thinking about how to counter them rather than actually leading the country by making decisions and directing his cabinet to deliver.
That’s the opportunity and challenge for Burnham: can he run and unite the cabinet, lead the herd of cats that is The Labour Party, demonstrate a plan and his vision, and then actually deliver. To do so he will need the chancellor to be his straight “man” and not a competitor. What he will not need is a Chancellor using the post to bolster their own political career or to push particular policy axes.
Burnham needs a competent and dedicated Chancellor to deliver his plan. The best qualified candidate is Reeves. There is no-one on the Labour bench with anything like her experience. She is a proper economist with Bank of England experience, she knows the job, she has a good working relationship with the Treasury, and she has shown she can use the Office for Budget Responsibility effectively. Yes, she is currently toxic because of the guilt through association with Starmer, but rinse, wash, repeat.
Burnham may decide she’s too tainted, or he might decide to make a practical call – and use her experience to back his new vision for Britain.
What let her down was the lack of imagination and leadership from the top – Starmer’s lack of vision or plan, the failure to improve the productivity and competitiveness of commerce and industry with any strategy, the failure to address the NHS, the lack of vision on the welfare budget, and understanding of how to solve the housing crisis. Reeves was left to do the knitting – sticking to what she’d been told to do: balance the books and don’t upset the bond markets.
There is plenty to fix – but as Reeves already knows the rules, how to work with the embedded bureaucratic treacle that is The Treasury, while using the OBR, there is little point to handing the job to a conviction politician like Miliband, or a careerist without a commercial bone in his body like Streeting.
Rachel Reeves may not have been the most competent, most imaginative or clear-thinking chancellor – but she understood the role: stability and the confidence of the City to fund the Gilts. As such, that may make her the best choice for a Labour and national re-boot under Burnham.
Out of time and back to the day job…
Bill Blain
Author of the Morning Porridge
CEO Windshift Capital
Advisor – Spitfire Strategic Capital
Meanwhile, don’t forget about my new book:
The Battle For Hamble is a proper grown-up examination of how bureaucracy has failed: a tale of Greedy Corporates, Bad Planning and Economic Illiteracy. It explains how a wholly unnecessary Gravel Quarry will be dug in middle of a prosperous village – putting 6000 jobs at risk. The truth is no one wants gravel, and the quarry company understands it’s not what you dig out, but what you stuff back into a hole in the ground that matters. Gravel sells for £30 a tonne – Landfill earns £150 a tonne to bury. Go figure.
