Rachel Reeves: the chess expert who may end up as queen of Labour

Rachel Reeves travels light. Where older colleagues are still labelled Blairite or Brownite, the woman tipped to lead her party is unburdened by such baggage. “I’ve never met Tony Blair, apart from once shaking hands with him at a constituency event,” she says.

Being a political cleanskin has served her well. Promoted to shadow chief secretary to the Treasury in Ed Miliband’s reshuffle, Miss Reeves has risen smoothly to one of the most critical jobs in Opposition. Her role is to persuade voters in the remainder of this Parliament that their money will be safe with Labour.

Driving home the message that neither Mr Miliband nor Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, has so far been able to impart, now falls to a barely-tested 32 year-old who has been an MP for less than two years. As George Osborne already knows from their Commons exchanges, it would be unwise to underestimate Rachel Reeves.

A junior chess champion from a relatively humble background, she spent 10 years as an economist for the Bank of England, HBOS and at the British embassy in Washington before entering Parliament. Her most recent piece of forensic accounting has been focused on Whitehall spending, and she is keen to offer us unpublished examples of government profligacy in 2011.

It is indeed intriguing, if not shocking, that someone at the Ministry of Justice (though surely not Kenneth Clarke) spent £889.95 at Avon, the beauty company, and £4,218.98 at Everglades Plant Centre in a single day. But would she agree that voters associate the previous administration with wasteful spending? “Yes.”