Rachel Reeves enters 2026 more unpopular than she has ever been before. YouGov polling from December has 71 per cent of Britons saying they have an unfavourable opinion of Britain’s first female chancellor. Reeves was meant to be a competent economist who could restore credibility to the Treasury and, in her words, ‘revive economic growth’. How’s that going? Reeve’s tenure in No. 11 has so far been more slapstick than good governance. Her CV unravelled under scrutiny; she broke manifesto commitments; she unveiled an appalling Budget, vowed never to repeat it, and then promptly did. Am I judging her too harshly? Am I being a misogynist? Reeves would probably say so.

We should judge female politicians just as we do men: brutally. The truth is that Margaret Thatcher was the last British female politician whose time in high office did not end in shame and acrimony. She spent more than 11 years in No. 10 (the longest premiership since 1827) and ran the country with a ruthless, disciplined competence that even her critics respected. She demonstrated that a woman could not just hold an important political post,........

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