Rachel Reeves

During her tenure as Chancellor, Reeves oversaw strengthened trade relations with key partners, reforms to encourage inward investment, and a resilience-first "securonomics" approach which found immediate relevance with the conflict in the Middle East. The UK now faces deep questions about where its economic strengths lie and who its friends are, in a world of rapid technological change and shifting geopolitical alignments. Reeves gives her candid views on how the UK can best position itself with respect to the US, Europe and beyond.

Reeves defined her “securonomics” approach as delivering resilience and growth in an age of insecurity. The challenges she inherited are common to many other G7 economies: high debt, low productivity, struggling public services, restrictive regulation, and an increasingly populist political landscape. Today’s geopolitical uncertainty and rapid technological change puts further pressure on traditional approaches to political economy. Reeves shares her candid reflections on the opportunities and challenges available to advanced economies.

Reeves inherited a high-debt economy still counting the cost of the financial crisis, Brexit, Covid-19, and a decade and a half of sluggish growth. Reeves sets out the choices she made to prioritise fiscal discipline while pursuing a pro-growth rewiring of the economy, built around the pillars of stability, investment and reform; and looks ahead to the challenges facing advanced economies across the world.

As the UK’s first female Chancellor, Rachel Reeves navigated tight fiscal constraints and global turbulence to achieve the highest growth in the G7 by the end of her tenure. Reeves gives a behind-the-scenes view of tackling head-on Britain’s challenges with low productivity, underinvestment, struggling public services, high debt, restrictive planning rules, and regional inequality, with a focus on investment and productivity policies.

Reeves’s tenure as Chancellor saw her oversee landmark deals with the United States, Gulf Cooperation Council, and India, and paved the way for closer relations with the European Union. Under her economic leadership the UK also drew in record-breaking international investment commitments, launched the National Wealth Fund to crowd-in private investment, and offered certainty through strong fiscal discipline and a Corporation Tax Roadmap. Reeves sets out the importance of reduced trade barriers and increased investment flows for growth and for working people, alongside prioritising resilience and fairness.

Reeves steered the UK’s economy through turbulence from conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, but perhaps more importantly laid the groundwork for a more resilient economy. In today’s world of geopolitical instability and technological change, there is no viable growth strategy without resilience in the national economy and security for working people. Reeves sets out her securonomics approach, including an active and strategic state, resilience in key sectors and supply chains, broad-based growth, and fiscal discipline.