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Hello and welcome to women with balls where I, Katie Balls, speak to today's trailblazers.

My guest this week is a former chess champion, economist, author and current Labour politician.

Born in South East London, she won a British chess championship

at the age of 14. She went on to study PPE at Oxford and read for a Masters in Economics at LSE.

Before entering politics, she had a career as an economist, having worked for the Bank of England,

the British Embassy and Halifax Bank of Scotland, but by 2010 she was elected

Member of Parliament for Leeds West. A devoted member of the Labour Party, joining at just 16 years

old, she was quickly seen as a rising star during Ed Miliband's leadership, but found herself on

the backbenchers during the Corbyn era. After the election in 2019, she said that Jeremy Corbyn can make all the excuses in the

world about the mainstream media, about Brexit, about people not voting, but the biggest drag

in this election was him.

Under Kiristama's leadership, she's returned to the Labour front bench and it's much

nice things to say about the Labour leader, having been appointed as a shadow minister

for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor the Duchy of Lancaster. My guest today is Rachel Reeves.

Thank you for joining me today, Rachel. Did I get anything wrong in my instructions?

Sounds about right.

Okay, great. That is a good start. Now, on this podcast, we begin by asking everyone the same question, which is, would you

describe your childhood as a happy one?

Yes, I would describe it as happy.

You know, I had a mum and dad who loved us and a little sister who I mainly loved.

My parents got divorced when I was about seven or eight, but at parents' evenings and

...