The Making of a Chancellor
Laura Kuenssberg looks at the ideas which have formed the chancellor Rachel Reeves, her attempts to implement them and what happens when events, both at home and abroad, intervene.
Last summer, Laura Kuenssberg went to Number 11 Downing Street for Rachel Reeves' first big interview after Labour's victory in the election.
The chancellor had just secured the job she had always wanted and had prepared for decades. 'There's a tradition of chancellors having often their predecessors hanging on a portrait looking down on them above the desk. Have you decided who you're going to put on your wall?' Laura asked. Reeves laughed. The portrait of Nigel Lawson had come down - who would replace him? 'You know I鈥檝e been hugely inspired by many women in politics and economics, women like Ellen Wilkinson鈥� and in economics, women like Joan Robinson...'
But which ideas have formed her most? And what happens when events, both at home and abroad, intervene? On the eve of the Spring Forecast, amidst angst on the Labour backbenches over cuts to welfare spending and a grim economic backdrop, Laura explores these questions by speaking to Rachel Reeves herself, as well as the former US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Labour strategist Deborah Mattinson.
Producer: Stephanie Mitcalf
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- Monday 16:00成人快手 Radio 4
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