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The Westminster drama has hit the Metropolis in additional methods than one. After Wes Streeting’s resignation triggered a mini-reshuffle, Felix Armstrong and Samuel Norman check out what the brand new Metropolis minister might need in retailer.
In slightly below two years, the Metropolis has its fourth minister.
Tulip Siddiq resigned in January 2025 after a corruption investigation in Bangladesh, with Emma Reynolds appointed in her place. Reynolds went on to be promoted simply eight months later and get replaced by Lucy Rigby within the reshuffle that got here within the wake of Angela Rayner’s resignation.
And one other eight months stint later Rigby herself has been taking over into the cupboard, climbing the Treasury rankings after chief secretary James Murray was despatched to the well being temporary as Sir Keir Starmer scuppered to cope with Wes Streeting’s resignation.
Rigby’s departure from financial secretary left open the essential function that’s designed to bridge the hole between the federal government and the monetary providers trade.
Enter: Rachel Blake.
Treasury Mind?
Blake, the MP for Cities of London and Westminster, returns to the Treasury after serving as an adviser to Gordon Brown on coverage throughout his tenure as Chancellor. Her function didn’t overlap too closely with the Metropolis temporary, nevertheless, together with her major give attention to planning coverage and the supply of latest properties.
While solely serving a 12 months within the Treasury, earlier than heading to Berkley Group property developer St George’s, the appointment could renew chatter of the ‘Treasury Orthodoxy’. The idea of ‘Treasury Mind’ was first thrust into the mainstream from Liz Truss, who criticised the ingrained institutional tradition of the division.
Although in a transparent distinction to among the Labour cupboard, she has expertise within the non-public sector, serving as a accomplice at Warre Constable, a agency offering skilled recommendation on property administration, and as a chair of the advisory board at biotech holding firm Elite Development.
Blake threw her personal hat into the political enviornment in 2014, the place for a decade she was a councillor in Bow East and served as deputy mayor of Tower Hamlets from 2018 to 2022. Her husband Marc Francis was additionally a councillor for Bow East, although he was ousted unceremoniously by the Greens on this month’s native elections.
Inheriting the publish, Blake will discover her docket shortly crammed to the brim with rallying calls from the Metropolis to speed up the deregulation agenda of the Treasury and ease the outsized burden the UK’s monetary sector faces.
A battle on ‘soiled cash’
Blake has been outspoken about her disdain for “soiled cash” and known as for the federal government to tackle illicit finance in a approach that helps create financial calm.
In addition to a one-year stint on the Treasury Committee, Blake co-chairs the All-Celebration Parliamentary Group on anti-corruption and accountable tax.
“Maintaining soiled cash out of the Metropolis of London and houses and communities throughout our nation is significant for our nationwide safety, in addition to our financial stability,” she stated, through the commons in March 2025.
Two days later in a debate on Political Finance Guidelines she took a shot at digital property: “Our monetary flows have gotten extra elusive, with cryptocurrency enabling cash laundering at scale”.
Blake took on the temporary simply weeks after Rigby pledged the federal government would deliver ahead laws to “reduce administrative burdens” for firms wanting to offer stablecoin funds in a bid to seize a slice of the fast-growing digital property market.
The Sq. Mile MP could deliver a contemporary perspective to the Treasury’s ailing mission for financial development after branding the “soiled cash” disaster in her personal constituency as a blocker to financial prosperity.
“My constituency has far and away probably the most soiled cash laundered by each the Metropolis of London and the Westminster property market,” Blake stated in a speech at King’s Faculty London final 12 months.
“Ranges of cash laundering in London corrode our communities, harm democracy all over the world, and block the expansion prospects of our capital’s financial system”
An bold housing advocate
Maybe surprisingly, Blake’s political profession has been outlined largely by a give attention to one other authorities temporary: housing.
In her first Treasury job, she was a part of the staff behind Dame Kate Barker’s land use overview, which Gordon Brown described because the “most detailed” report on housing “in 50 years”.
The report beneficial that the federal government arrange “market affordability targets,” pressure native authorities to be extra versatile in land allocation and set up common critiques of the housing market. The Residence Builders Federation (HBF), a number one trade physique, stated in 2024 that solely 11 of Barker’s 36 suggestions had been put in place. If the federal government had listened to Barker in full, the HBF stated, the UK would have two million extra properties right this moment.
Blake is vice-chair of the Labour Housing Group, had beforehand served because the secretary of London’s Labour Housing Group, and frequently writes for “progressive” housing coverage weblog Purple Brick.
The brand new Metropolis minister has been extremely vital of earlier governments’ tempo on housing supply, which she says has left the nation with out 4.3m “lacking properties”.
Throughout her time in Tower Hamlets Council, she stated a lot of the three years her native authority spent engaged on an area housing plan was wasted by “ready” for the Tory authorities to schedule a planning inspection.
Native authorities ought to be handed “more practical powers to intervene when websites should not being developed,” she wrote in 2020.
Blake has backed Labour’s divisive renters’ rights act, claiming that the brand new powers be certain that “the power to stay in your house doesn’t rely in your willingness to simply accept no matter phrases are put earlier than you”.
However some property consultants have warned that the reforms – which embody ending no-fault evictions and fixed-term contracts – may pressure landlords out of the sector as a result of they might worry being powerless to take away a “downside” tenant.
Main home commerce physique Actual Property UK stated there’s “vital institutional capital” poised to put money into British housing, if the federal government can encourage confidence.
The physique’s chief govt, Danny Pinder, advised Metropolis AM: “We look ahead to working with [Blake] to drag down the obstacles to constructing extra properties of all tenures, boosting the financial system and creating jobs in any respect ranges of the availability chain.”
Loyalty to the Starmer regime
Amidst the management tremors, Blake has remained loyal to the Prime Minister, making her fast rise to the Treasury minister publish much less of a shock.
On the federal government’s wider agenda, Blake has been a vocal supporter of the Employment Rights Invoice, which has been a long-running headache for prime monetary names. Metropolis foyer teams have highlighted issues about how the brand new “proper to change off” and protections towards “fireplace and rehire” will work together with the watchdog’s calls for for high-stakes accountability and non-financial misconduct guidelines.
In a speech final 12 months Blake stated: “One in each fifty-two British employees is employed within the Metropolis of London, and each one in every of them can have extra protections towards unfair dismissal from day one of their job, even within the Metropolis’s strongest establishments.”
In the identical tackle, she additionally took the chance to leap to the defence of Labour’s tax-raising Budgets.
She stated Labour had raised taxes in a approach “which recognises simply how excessive the tax burden is on working individuals, focusing these will increase on these with the broadest shoulders”. The sentiment echoed that of the highest of presidency, which reiterated the remarks to defend its money seize on a few of Britain’s largest wealth creators by the non-dom adjustments and personal faculties tax.
Blake is likely one of the ‘greater than 100 MPs’ which have signed a letter supporting Starmer to remain in publish, that means, for now, Starmer has an ally in his fourth Metropolis minster. However with a management row brewing, the Sq. Mile may quickly be in for quantity 5 underneath a brand new Prime Minister.
