Rachel Reeves and Chess

[Gerard Killoran]

Reeves claimed to be an economist for a bank, when she actually worked in the complaints department.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/ ... her-resume

She also plagiarised Wikipedia for at least one of her books
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67225980

Either offence should disqualify her from high office.

I have beaten Helen Milligan (former British and Scottish women's champion) and Tim Kett (four times Welsh Champion) in club games. So perhaps I'm some sort of British champion too.

[Alan Walton]

Alex Edmans
Wokingham Times - Thursday 28 June 1990 p.20.png

OK so an Under 11 match against Scotland. Not the greatest of sporting achievements and there will be hundreds of people with similar experiences. I'd imagine it was also organised by a private body, not the BCF.

I remember when my brother was Under 11 (around the same time), it was possibly EPSCA who organized these matches

Firstly you had the England trials tournament where, the top 15 automatically qualified for the 20 board match against Scotland; then say 10 players were on a shortlist, and the best 5 of these at the team national finals to the final positions; then the next 20 played for England B

There was also a 12 board match in 1989 in the Bristol area against Wales before the British in Plymouth which my brother played it; and also a four board match against the UAE at the British itself (from memory this team was Edward Goodall, Jonathan Walton, Paul Walton and Mark Jackson)

[Paul Heaton]

According to the Daily Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... eeves.html

But an academic who represented England and Britain at chess this week accused her of overstating her achievement, saying 'in reality, she was joint 26th out of 34'.

Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, said that Reeves had actually shared the title for another, smaller tournament.

Is there evidence of Edmans representing England and Britain at chess? Isn't he himself guilty of overstating his achievements?

Here's what he says at X:

I played for the England junior chess team, was British Squad Champion and London Junior Champion, but had never heard of Rachel Reeves, even though she was only a year above me. Newspaper claims that she was British U14 girls' champion are false; she came 26th out of 34 in that tournament.

The detailed post is on his blog and answers so many things this forum speculates on (his chess background, why he thinks relevant etc)

https://maycontainlies.com/was-rachel-r ... it-matter/

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Yes, we had Boris Johnson misleading Parliament about multiple illegal gatherings during Covid."

And so did his opponents. Dr House has memorably told us, "Everybody lies." That probably applies more to politicians of every country than any other profession!

So all this tit-for-tat stuff about dishonest politicians is a bit boring and not actually relevant. Let's face it, virtually all of them are a waste of oxygen.

[Matt Mackenzie]

And in any kind of profession - be it banking, law, medicine, or a company boardroom- if you exaggerate your CV you are out. I’ve seen people fired in a bank for a lot less than adding 4 years to a place of work when it’s been uncovered (background checks are common place, and it’s not uncommon to start a job while the background check is ongoing).

Adding 4 years to a place of work - sure, you might get fired. Slightly exaggerating accomplishments in a childhood hobby - you would not be fired. For a politician in this day and age - utter irrelevance.

And now we have evidence that Mr Edmans himself may have been exaggerating both his chess and work achievements just a bit.

What that "every accusation a confession" thing again?

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Have you ever tried changing something on a Wiki page? My experience of correcting things (scientific, and film-related, but not related to each other!) is that it gets changed back overnight.

I agree. I used to edit articles on Wikipedia quite a lot, and even added a few new ones. However in the last few years it's become very difficult. For example the year of birth of an actress was listed as 1995/1996 (this based on the age she was at the time she gave an interview several years ago). However she is a company director and Companies House gave the month and year of her birth, so I changed 1995/1996 to 1995 and explained why. Within two hours someone had changed it back because "we're not allowed to use company registration, as it's a primary source". I think this means that primary sources can be difficult to interpret and Wikipedia prefers reliable secondary sources that have themselves used the primary sources.

[Gerard Killoran]

And now we have evidence that Mr Edmans himself may have been exaggerating both his chess and work achievements just a bit.

What evidence is that?

[Paul Cooksey]

The detailed post is on his blog and answers so many things this forum speculates on (his chess background, why he thinks relevant etc) https://maycontainlies.com/was-rachel-r ... it-matter/

I did find his blog interesting. I didn't play in many junior events myself. So I am not sure if his position on which events were more or less prestigious are accurate.

Malcolm's contention that the BWCA 1993 U14 girls championship was a more legitimate title than the BCF one seems a bit of a stretch to me. But politically motivated as his comment may have been, I agree with his implication that we are in a grey area about legitimacy. The bloggers position that this is a situation where there is a clear factual answer and anyone arguing something else is lying seems wrong to me.

I'm not Nigel Short's biggest fan, but I wouldn't accuse him of lying about playing in the 1993 world championship.

[Roger de Coverly]

Malcolm's contention that the BWCA 1993 U14 girls championship was a more legitimate title than the BCF one seems a bit of a stretch to me.

THere's also the point that the BWCA followed a convention that only one title per person could be held. Thus Ruth Sheldon who finished above the four who shared the Under 14 title was awarded the Under 18 title despite being also eligible for the Under 16 and Under 14..

There had been a lobby in the 1980s that the female titles should be awarded in the Open events. This took effect in 1989 for the British Championship. The last separate Girl's event seems to have been as far back as 1978, so the lobbying was only for the British itself. That had something to do with the availablity of FIDE ratings and Norms which were only possible in an Open event because of player strength.

The BWCA 1993 event was exhumed from the 1994 BCF Yearbook. Is there any data on previous and subsequent events?

[AustinElliott]

The bloggers position that this is a situation where there is a clear factual answer and anyone arguing something else is lying seems wrong to me.

This is Prof Alex Edmans. As a fellow academic I find his statements... puzzling. There are very few professions that operate under an 'absolute duty of candour', and the contentions on his blog that UK business and finance are among them practically had me spitting into my cornflakes when I read it. I would challenge anyone who'd been watching the UK over the last two or three decades not to do an eye-roll.

I certainly don't think anyone is under the impression that modern UK politics operates to a duty of candour. It took a massive scandal to get politicians to be even a bit candid about their expenses, and even now the entries in the register of MPs' interests are pretty sketchy and generally far from up-to-date. UK politics in the TV and internet age is about 'vibes'.

In addition, given the amount of coverage high-profile politicians get, do we think they really read all their own interviews? Do we think all reporters quote them verbatim, or do they paraphrase? Is the potential for misquotation or mis-inference real? Should politicians be micro-correcting every statement made about them? Wouldn't that just egg the media on? 'S/he must have something to hide!' etc.

The level of nitpicking that has been expended on whether Reeves might have bigged up her chess achievements ever-so-slightly, or not corrected it when others over-egged it, is utterly laughable, Especially given (inter alia) the state of the UK economy, the state of UK politics, Donald Trump's trashing of the world order and apparent intent on shunting Europe to the far right, the Ukraine War, the ongoing disaster of climate change etc etc. In the media context, you need to ask - whose agenda does this sort of distraction furore serve?

I also ask again: if Reeves were a posh chap who'd been to somewhere like St Paul's School (like Prof Edmans, NB), would we be seeing all this? Or if she were a Tory Chancellor?

One of the reasons that DEI initiatives and policies (the ones the right has been waging culture war about) exist is that people are largely blind to their own biases.

Finally, one of the things being around chess for the last 15 years (including on a Council or Committee or two) has taught me is that quite a lot of chess player really do struggle to see the wood for the trees.

[AustinElliott]

The bloggers position that this is a situation where there is a clear factual answer and anyone arguing something else is lying seems wrong to me.

This is Prof Alex Edmans. As a fellow academic I find his statements... puzzling. There are very few professions that operate under an 'absolute duty of candour', and the contentions on his blog that UK business and finance are among them practically had me spitting into my cornflakes when I read it. I would challenge anyone who'd been watching the UK over the last two or three decades not to do an eye-roll.

I certainly don't think anyone is under the impression that modern UK politics operates to a duty of candour. It took a massive scandal to get politicians to be even a bit candid about their expenses, and even now the entries in the register of MPs' interests are pretty sketchy and generally far from up-to-date. UK politics in the TV and internet age is about 'vibes'.

In addition, given the amount of coverage high-profile politicians get, do we think they really read all their own interviews? Do we think all reporters quote them verbatim, or do they paraphrase? Is the potential for misquotation or mis-inference real? Should politicians be micro-correcting every statement made about them? Wouldn't that just egg the media on? 'S/he must have something to hide!' etc.

The level of nitpicking that has been expended on whether Reeves - who we all agree played chess to a decent standard as a junior - might have bigged up her chess achievements ever-so-slightly, e.g. by putting 'the rosiest interpretation' on the facts, or might have not corrected it when others over-egged her achievements, is utterly laughable. Especially given (inter alia) the state of the UK economy, the state of UK politics, Donald Trump's trashing of the world order and apparent intent on shunting Europe to the far right, the Ukraine War, the ongoing disaster of climate change etc etc. In the media context, you need to ask - whose agenda does this sort of distraction furore serve?

I also ask again: if Reeves were a posh chap who'd been to somewhere like St Paul's School (like Prof Edmans, NB), would we be seeing all this? Or any of it? If she were a Tory Chancellor?

One of the reasons that DEI initiatives and policies (the ones the right has been waging culture war about) exist is that people are largely blind to their own biases.

Finally, one of the things being around chess for the last 15 years (including on a Council or Committee or two) has taught me is that quite a lot of chess player really do struggle to see the wood for the trees.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I have been looking around Alex Edmans's website and it is interesting. I won't comment here on the range of types of websites like this from people in academia, except to say that finance academia seems to be better at self-promotion than other areas, and that, when done well, websites like this are a great vehicle to promote your work (there will be other, more standard profiles of his work, less flashily presented).

As for his blog, he does not appear to blog that often, and it is quite surprising, IMO, that he wrote at as great a length as he did about Rachel Reeves. That might mean something.

[Gerard Killoran]

I also ask again: if Reeves were a posh chap who'd been to somewhere like St Paul's School (like Prof Edmans, NB), would we be seeing all this? Or if she were a Tory Chancellor?

Alexander 'Boris' Johnson was absurdly posh, male and went to Eton. His dishonesty brought him down. Reeve's embellishment of her chess achievements would matter little if they weren't part of a pattern of more serious dishonesty. Other politicians have lost their jobs for dodgy CVs and plagiarism - why does she get a free pass?

[Matt Mackenzie]

Johnson's falsehoods were of a considerably greater magnitude than any sins of omission or indeed commission that RR may have practised. And that is simply an objective statement of fact, not seeking to absolve whatever wrong she has done in any way.

[Angus French]

It's not chess-related but will possibly be of interest: a BBC News story about Rachel Reeves and her expense claims at HBOS.