Rachel Reeves and Chess

[Matthew Turner]

Just very randomly saw this Facebook post which I think will be of interest from a few months ago. Apologies, if it has already been mentioned here but I cannot recall seeing ot before

https://www.facebook.com/rachelreeves10 ... 5775275713

[Gerard Killoran]

Being good at chess means you are good at chess, no more, no less.

Ken Rogoff was a GM which didn't stop him doing untold damage with his poor economics.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -austerity

https://theconversation.com/the-reinhar ... mics-13646

I once beat Helen Milligan OTB - and she was British and Scottish Women's champion. Should I be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer?

[Kevin Thurlow]

She says she wants working people to be better off, so I assume the unpaid interns in her office are celebrating their first pay-cheques!

[Matt Mackenzie]

Being good at chess means you are good at chess, no more, no less.

There are few better examples of this than certain past world champions.

[Matt Fletcher]

From a previous thread on Rachel Reeves - an example of her play (against me, many years ago!)

Rachel was in my age group as a junior and we played in a number of the same tournaments - I have a couple of games against her in my old scorebooks.

This is the better of them, from almost 20 years ago:

[Event "Basingstoke U14"] [Date "17.04.1993"] [Round "4"] [White "Reeves, Rachel"] [Black "Fletcher, Matthew"] [Result "0-1"] [ECO "C02"] [PlyCount "90"] 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. c3 Nc6 5. Nf3 Qb6 6. Be2 cxd4 7. cxd4 Nge7 8. Na3 Nf5 9. Nc2 Bb4+ 10. Kf1 Be7 11. b3 Bd7 12. g3 Rc8 13. Bb2 f6 14. Kg2 fxe5 15. dxe5 Qc7 16. Ncd4 Nfxd4 17. Bxd4 Nxd4 18. Qxd4 Qc5 19. Qxc5 Bxc5 20. Rhc1 O-O 21. a3 h6 22. Rc2 Bb6 23. Rac1 Rxc2 24. Rxc2 Bc6 25. Rd2 d4 26. a4 a5 27. g4 Bd5 28. Rd3 Be4 29. Rd2 d3 30. Bd1 Bd4 31. Kg3 Bc3 32. Ra2 Rd8 33. Nd2 Bh7 34. Bf3 Bxe5+ 35. Kg2 b6 36. Nc4 Bc3 37. Bd1 d2 38. Ra3 Bb1 39. b4 axb4 40. Rb3 Ba2 41. Nxb6 Bxb3 42. Bxb3 d1=Q 43. Bxd1 Rxd1 44. a5 Ra1 45. Nc4 b3 0-1

[Ian Thompson]

Some references to Rachel Reeves playing chess on today's Woman's Hour on Radio 4, about 16 minutes into the programme.

According to Harriet Harman something that shows she will be a good chancellor is that she was "beating all the men at chess before she was a teenager."

According to Rachel Cunliffe (political correspondent of the New Statesman) she, and her sister, used to turn up at chess tournaments as state educated schoolgirls and consequently be "underestimated by posh public schoolboys" they were playing against.

[Roger Lancaster]

It's dangerous to assume, as some on this forum seem to have done, that Rachel Reeves will be favourably disposed towards chess simply because she plays or played herself. If you're the Chancellor of the Exchequer having to preside over austerity, what better way of demonstrating your bona fides than by denying funding to a personally favourite activity?

[Paul McKeown]

Post deleted to stop Daily Mail journocunts from bothering me with unsolicited phone calls.

[Matt Mackenzie]

It's dangerous to assume, as some on this forum seem to have done, that Rachel Reeves will be favourably disposed towards chess simply because she plays or played herself. If you're the Chancellor of the Exchequer having to preside over austerity, what better way of demonstrating your bona fides than by denying funding to a personally favourite activity?

We shall see if this actually turns out to be the case, I suppose.

[John Upham]

We shall see if this actually turns out to be the case, I suppose.

What will be your time scale for this potential observation?

[Nick Burrows]

We shall see if this actually turns out to be the case, I suppose.

What will be your time scale for this potential observation?

64 days

[Angus French]

It's dangerous to assume, as some on this forum seem to have done, that Rachel Reeves will be favourably disposed towards chess simply because she plays or played herself. If you're the Chancellor of the Exchequer having to preside over austerity, what better way of demonstrating your bona fides than by denying funding to a personally favourite activity?

We shall see if this actually turns out to be the case, I suppose.

Just to say, I don't think Labour will have to preside over austerity. Their manifesto states "there will be no return to austerity" and provides some scope for manoeuvre with the fiscal rule: "Debt must be falling as a share of the economy by the fifth year of the forecast". Austerity is a political choice and, so far as I understand it, a bad one in an economic downturn when you want to encourage growth.

[Roger Lancaster]

Some perfectly reasonable responses to my original post which merely sought to advise against counting unhatched chickens.

[Matt Mackenzie]

It's dangerous to assume, as some on this forum seem to have done, that Rachel Reeves will be favourably disposed towards chess simply because she plays or played herself. If you're the Chancellor of the Exchequer having to preside over austerity, what better way of demonstrating your bona fides than by denying funding to a personally favourite activity?

We shall see if this actually turns out to be the case, I suppose.

Just to say, I don't think Labour will have to preside over austerity. Their manifesto states "there will be no return to austerity" and provides some scope for manoeuvre with the fiscal rule: "Debt must be falling as a share of the economy by the fifth year of the forecast". Austerity is a political choice and, so far as I understand it, a bad one in an economic downturn when you want to encourage growth.

Agree with all this.

Whatever else you say about her, RR is an intelligent person and must surely be aware of the above too.

So let's wait and see.

[Paul McKeown]

Given the previous 14 years of Tory chaos, corruption, pandering to the rentier economy, complete neglect of the real economy, ideologically driven destruction of the nation's social capital, a laughing two fingers raised to the environment that we live in, stoking of culture wars rather than attempting to heal the divisions in society or to fix the obviously cratered national infrastructure and the attempts at gunship diplomacy with all our most important allies, only without the gunships, Gideon having already had them all scrapped, I struggle to see how Rachel Reeves could possibly fail to do better than the bunch of cretins who took the Maoist approach of tearing everything down in a process of supposedly creative destruction, merely to discover that all they left behind was shite pouring into all our national waterways. My main criticism of the incoming Labour government would be that it will attempt to govern rather to the right of where the political heart of the nation is currently beating. Of course, this will not stop a miasma of ridiculous bile pouring out of the usual orifices of the Fourth Estate.