Sexism struck early in Rachel Reeves’s life. Last night the shadow chancellor gave a talk about her new book on female economists, and she recalled an early brush with toxic masculinity. Aged eight, competing in a public chess tournament, she faced a little boy who foresaw a swift and easy victory. ‘Lucky I’m playing a girl’, he said. Reeves duly thrashed him. ‘He didn’t say it again after that,’ she told the crowd.
At Oxford and the LSE she was a keen sexism detective and she noted with dismay that there were no women teaching economics at either university. Things got worse at the male-dominated Treasury where her colleagues created a new computer graphic, BOEQM (Bank of England Quarterly Model.) The chaps referred to BOEQM as ‘Beckham,’ which made Reeves feel uncomfortable and excluded. ““Beckham?” I thought: “Oh, this just does my head in”,’ she told us, although she didn’t explain why the footballer’s name caused her so much distress. However, Reeves is not easily defeated. Having survived the chess-board outrage and the Beckham humiliation she decided to stand up for her sex by writing The Women Who Made Modern Economics.
Reeves has renamed the theory ‘securonomics’ which sounds like a dusty old board-game that no one plays
Not many of us can name a single female economist, and that owes itself to the thoughtless misogyny that prevailed during most of the 20th century. Milton Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976 but no recognition was given to his chief collaborator, Anna Schwartz, who co-authored one of his best known works, A Monetary History of America, 1863-1960. Friedman enjoyed making jokes about Schwartz’s obscurity. ‘She’s the perfect partner. She does most of the work and I get most of the credit.’
Reeves is keen on the career of Cambridge economist, Joan Robinson, whose pioneering research led to the introduction of the minimum wage by the Blair government. And she admires Harriet Martineau, a 19th century sociologist, who began as a devotee of Adam Smith and felt that government should play no role in the regulation of wages. Martineau argued that it was unfair to deprive labourers, including children, of the chance to work in a factory. ‘But her views changed when she saw the mills and the conditions of slaves in the plantations,’ said Reeves. It’s odd that Martineau’s work isn’t better known. Her books, according to Reeves, were extremely popular. ‘She outsold John Stuart Mill.’
Her favourite female economist is Janet Yellen, former boss of the US Federal Reserve, who now heads the US Treasury. Perhaps Reeves admires Yellen because she indulges in pessimistic fantasies about women’s second-class role in finance. ‘I see a macho culture,’ said Yellen recently. ‘I see men collaborating and women being excluded.’ Excluded from what exactly? Yellen is the most powerful financier in the world. The head of the IMF is a woman, the president of the ECB is a woman, and Reeves is set to become chancellor next year. So why do Reeves and Yellen appear to be crippled by self-doubt and paranoia?
Reeves promises to import Yellen’s big idea to Britain, ‘productivism’. The theory – and it’s a slender one – is that governments must open up supply chains fed by stable and ethically sound regimes. For British voters, Reeves has renamed the theory ‘securonomics’ which sounds like a dusty old board-game that no one plays. The rest of her policies are built around banalities like ‘investment partnerships’ and ‘national strategies.’ And Reeves is already spouting the OBR’s dogma like a brainwashed hostage. ‘If you delay environmental action by a decade you double the cost,’ she parrots.
The prospect of a woman in the Treasury brings hopes of a fresh sensibility and a wealth of emotional intelligence. But Reeves’s policies are bad. Her plan to scrap non-dom status is based on a misunderstanding of the millionaire mindset. Rich people are good at doing sums and if the bill for remaining in Britain soars, they’ll leave. The same battering-ram approach inspires Labour’s war on private education. Forcing parents to move their children out of their chosen schools is an act of vengeance presented as a chance to improve the state system with new cash. The sums raised are likely to be meagre. Extra schools will have to be built to accommodate some, or all, of the 615,000 kids currently being educated privately. And where’s the sense in creating over half a million child fugitives? Reeves may wear a dress but she makes policy like an old-fashioned boots-and-braces male.
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