Never mind what Rachel Reeves did long ago at the Bank of England: what claims do you make on your CV? | Emma Brockes

The chancellor is said to have ‘rounded up’ her years of service. But if she did plump up her working achievements a bit, who hasn’t?

There are lies, evasions and manipulations by politicians that, when they come to light, can make the politician in question seem even less relatable than the average. (So many to choose from, but I’m thinking in particular of Boris Johnson’s weird ad-hoc claim to relax by making models of buses). And then there are the exaggerations that can make a politician seem mildly more human, one of which, I would suggest, is CV inflation – the tweaking of one’s professional details to look better than they actually are. Didn’t Rachel Reeves spend “a decade” working at the Bank of England in the same way that, in our resumes, we are all at some level fluent in French?

The exact breakdown of how Reeves spent her working life in her 20s and 30s has, over the past week or so, been pored over by journalists looking for inconsistencies after it emerged that she may have rounded up somewhat in the details. According to the website Guido Fawkes, when Reeves claimed to have worked as an “economist” at the Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) straight out of university, she had, in fact, been in an administrative role that mainly managed complaints and small projects. After more digging, the website claimed that Reeves, possibly alerted to the fact that she’d been busted, changed her LinkedIn profile so that “economist” became “retail banking”. Then the Telegraph piled in asserting that Reeves’s claim to have spent “a decade” at the Bank of England was actually more like six years. (It was also later suggested on X that one of those years was spent studying for a masters at LSE).

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.