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If I was Reeves, I would edit my CV, too. Although I’d have gone a lot further than she did.
Yesterday, it emerged that the chancellor had “updated” her profile on business social media platform LinkedIn to remove a claim that she worked as an economist at the Bank of Scotland between 2006 and 2009.
She came clean and said her role was in “retail banking” instead.
Economist is a fancy title that makes people sound clever and senior, so I can understand why she’d prefer that.
Yet according to political website Guido Fawkes, she actually held a more “mundane” role handling customer complaints.
The Tories have jumped on this. Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick accused Reeves of being “economical with the truth”.
A Conservative Party party source told the Express: “It seems Rachel Reeves employment history claims are about as accurate as her promises not to raise taxes on working people – based on deception and increasingly proved false.”
Let’s not be too harsh. Everybody embellishes their CV to make their achievements look better than they really are. In fact, if I was Reeves, I’d roll up my sleeves and do some serious editing.
Especially on the recent stuff.
I’d be terrified that nobody would offer me a job if they discovered what a hash I’d made in my recent position as shadow chancellor.
I’d start by excising all the claims I’d made during the election about not increasing taxes on working people.
Especially the national insurance (NI) one. Sneakily reversing that pledge by launching a £25billion NI raid on businesses wouldn’t look good on anyone’s resumé.
Employers prize honesty above everything.
Then I’d slap the Tippex on virtually everything I’d done since taking over my latest role as chancellor on July 6.
I’d obliterate all mention of my decision to scrap the Winter Fuel Payment for 10million pensioners. That’s just an embarrassment.
Then I’d delete my disastrous decision to talk down the economy in the run-up to the Budget and menace the nation with tax hikes, which destroyed business and consumer confidence.
I certainly wouldn’t want prospective employers to know that I’d turned the UK from the fastest growing economy in the G7 to the second slowest in less than four months on the job.
Who’d recruit me after reading that?
In fact, I’d drop all mention of the Budget. And when the UK economy tanks next year, I’d gloss over that too.
A good, hard edit might leave the Reeves CV looking threadbare but she could pad it out with some HR-friendly fluff about being Britain’s first female chancellor.
At least that way she should be able to find a new job. Working in complaints, perhaps? She’s had a lot of experience in that department already, and can expect a lot more over the months ahead.