Chancellor of the Exchequer through historyOriginal
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Rachel Reeves has made history as the first Chancellor of the Exchequer to deliver a budget.
00:05Reeves is the first woman in a long line of male chancellors that stretches all the way
00:08back to 1066.
00:10Equivalent to the Finance Minister in other countries, it's the Chancellor's responsibility
00:14to ensure the government can collect enough income to cover its spending plans and, ideally,
00:20to make sure everyone in the land is taxed fairly.
00:24That's where the budget comes in.
00:26On Budget Day, ever since William Gladstone in the 1860s, the Chancellor appears outside
00:3011 Downing Street brandishing a red briefcase containing the Chancellor's budget plans.
00:36Because of the significant responsibility of the Chancellorship, many Chancellors go
00:40on to become Prime Minister.
00:42Examples include Rishi Sunak, Gordon Brown, John Major, Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain.
00:48But the current Chancellor, Reeves, has said explicitly that she doesn't want to be PM
00:53because being Chancellor has always been her dream job.
00:57Her university friends even gifted her a framed photograph of Gordon Brown, then Labour's
01:01Chancellor, so she could hang it in her dorm room.