Why is Rachel Reeves still in her job? Why has the Chancellor of the Exchequer not been sacked for breaking the law?
Between last Wednesday and last Thursday, she made a crucial change in information she gave the Prime Minister about the letting of her house (co-owned with her husband, Nicholas Joicey) in the London Borough of Southwark from September 2024.
Late on Wednesday evening, she maintained in a letter to Sir Keir Starmer that ‘regrettably, we were not aware that a licence was necessary’ to rent out the house, and apologised for an ‘inadvertent mistake’.
This echoed what her spokesman had told the Mail earlier that evening when confronted with evidence that the Chancellor had broken the law. She had ‘not been made aware of the licensing requirement’. Ignorance was her defence.
Untruth
Yet, less than 24 hours later, an email from Harvey and Wheeler (the estate agent letting the house) was released proving that Reeves’s husband had been told in July 2024 that a licence was compulsory. It read: ‘We will need to apply for a licence under the Selective Licensing Scheme via Southwark Council’.
Rachel Reeves with Sir Keir Starmer. Why is she still in her job? Why has the Chancellor of the Exchequer not been sacked for breaking the law?
Yesterday’s Mail on Sunday reported that, before engaging Harvey and Wheeler, Reeves and her husband were warned by estate agent Knight Frank that they would be obliged to apply for a licence, the cost of which is £900. Failure to do so can incur unlimited fines.
One moment she tells the PM she didn’t realise a licence was needed. The next, emails show that in fact the couple knew perfectly well that it was a legal requirement.
Starmer’s response was to say it was ‘clearly regrettable’ that the information in the emails hadn’t been shared with him the previous day. Nonetheless, he added that he regarded this as an ‘inadvertent failure’. For what reason?
Meanwhile his ‘ethics adviser’, Sir Laurie Magnus, who on Wednesday evening had given Rachel Reeves an immediate clean bill of health, found ‘no evidence of bad faith’ after the discrepancy was made apparent.
Isn’t this all absolutely incredible? I don’t say that the Chancellor told a lie – which is defined as a deliberate falsehood – but she was undoubtedly guilty of saying something untrue.
An untruth, moreover, that is of the utmost seriousness. If she had been unaware of her legal obligations, reasonable people might be inclined to excuse her, even though ignorance of the law is no defence. But it is surely beyond dispute that she knew what she was supposed to do, and yet didn’t do it.
So I return to my original question. Why is she still in her job, preparing a Budget, due to be delivered in just over three weeks, in which it is thought possible that she will break a manifesto undertaking (surprise, surprise) not to raise income tax?
Starmer is eager to keep her by his side in the belief that if she went he’d soon be forced to follow, since many Labour MPs – not to mention more than half the country – yearn to be shot of him.
In his desperation to hang on to Reeves, the Prime Minister is fortunate to have an accommodating ally in his ethics adviser. Even when Reeves’s falsehood came to light, Sir Laurie Magnus was quick to exculpate her.
Some anti-Starmer Labour MPs have reportedly been grumbling that when Angela Rayner was found to have underpaid stamp duty by £40,000 on a new flat in Hove two months ago, the PM lost little time in despatching his old rival.
On that occasion, a markedly sterner version of Sir Laurie judged that Rayner had paid the wrong rate of stamp duty in ‘good faith’ but had still broken the ministerial code. He doesn’t believe the Chancellor did, even though the same code requires ‘holders of public office to be truthful’.
Starmer’s utter determination to retain Reeves doesn’t entirely explain why she has so far survived. I can think of two other factors that have worked in her favour.
One is the King’s drastic treatment of his brother, Andrew. There hasn’t been such a royal convulsion since the Abdication Crisis of 1936. The spotlight was removed from the Chancellor at a crucial moment as politicians and the media tried to make sense of an even more seismic national story.
Also counting in Reeves’s favour has been the lack of interest in her behaviour on the part of the BBC. This is traditional. In Labour scandal after Labour scandal, our supposedly neutral public broadcaster has been slow on the uptake.
Ms Reeves is a woman whose probity has already been questioned far more often than that of any other current minister over numerous broken promises on tax
Inconsistency
Not so with the Tories, of course, whose every misdemeanour tends to be given instant maximum coverage. Ask Boris Johnson. During his downfall, every mouthful of cake or moment snatched in the Downing Street garden or fleeting appearance at a No 10 party got the full works from the Beeb.
By the way, despite young people’s supposed lack of interest in television and radio news, the BBC in its various forms still reaches 67 per cent of adults over 16 – double its nearest rival. A story neglected by the BBC struggles to attain national awareness.
All this helps explain why Reeves appears for the moment to have been spared, and hasn’t felt it necessary to give a full account of her extraordinary inconsistency.
I suppose it’s not absolutely inconceivable that she behaved correctly. Might her husband have failed to communicate the verdict of two estate agents that a special licence was required, so that Reeves was somehow kept out of the loop?
As a get-out-of-jail-free card I’d take even less seriously the statement by the estate agents last Thursday that Reeves and Joicey ‘would have been under the impression that a licence had been applied for’.
Murky
The suggestion is that an employee handling the matter left the company at an inopportune moment, and so the application wasn’t made. Even if this version of events is accurate, why didn’t the couple ask themselves why they hadn’t been charged £900 for a licence?
In any case, we are left with the startling discrepancy in Reeves’s two accounts. She wrote that she didn’t know and then it became clear that she did. Doesn’t that appear damning? Why won’t she offer an explanation? Why doesn’t Sir Laurie ask for one?
I haven’t given up hope that the BBC and other media outlets will still examine this murky affair properly, and that the British people will briefly drag their attention away from Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and fix their minds on Rachel Reeves.
She is a woman whose probity has already been questioned far more often than that of any other current minister over numerous broken promises on tax, her shameless rewriting of her CV, and a book in which she merrily plagiarised several sources without acknowledgment.
Sir Keir Starmer wrote in a foreword to the Ministerial Code only last month: ‘For too long politicians have acted as if service was an entitlement.’ You can say that again. It’s getting worse.
There must be an independent inquiry, as the Tories suggest, to ascertain whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and second most important figure in the Government, has told a blatant lie.
