“I am – I was – a geek. I played chess. I was the British girls under-14 champion.”
So said Rachel Reeves in a Guardian interview. The Independent, Sky News, and Reuters ran similar headlines:
They claimed that her chess ability would lead to her becoming a successful chancellor. Reeves herself said “I’ve learned to think ahead, to plan a strategy.” The BBC turned it into a broader political narrative about sexism and private schools: “Growing up, Reeves was driven around the country by her parents to compete and beat privately educated boys, often as the only state school-educated girl”. Harriet Harman claimed she was “beating all the men at chess before she was a teenager.”
I believe that chess teaches lots of skills useful later in life. I also believe that Reeves has done fantastic things to promote the value of chess, by supporting programmes such as Chess in Schools and Communities, and announcing a £1.5 million government fund. This post is focused specifically on the objective issue of whether Reeves was in fact British Girls’ Under-14 Champion, and the subjective issue of whether this matters.
1. Was Reeves the British Girls Under-14 Champion?
I was intrigued by the newspaper headlines, because I played for the England junior team (U11), was British Squad Champion (U8) and London Junior Champion (U16). However, I had never heard of Reeves, even though she was only a year above me. At that age, everyone knows everyone else +/- 2 years: we played the same tournaments, knew each other’s favourite openings, and hung out between games. This piqued my interest and led me to investigate the issue.
The results of the British Under-14 Girls Champion are here and state that Emily Howard won the title.
Note that it uses the same exact phrasing that Reeves used: “British Girls’ Under 14 Champion”. Indeed, the British Championships is the only body that grants the title of British Champion. The winner in an age group is British Champion, and the highest-performing girl is the British Girls’ Champion. Reeves came joint 26th out of 34, with a score of 2.5/7.
It is true that Reeves shared the U14 title (with three others) for a separate event, the British Women’s Chess Association Girls’ Championships
However, this is a different (and much smaller) event, which confers a different title, of BWCA Girls’ Champion. For context, there were very many chess tournaments in the 1990s. Almost every weekend you could play in a tournament, and an active junior might play in one or two a month. Thus, many people (including Reeves) can legitimately claim to be chess champions and to have won chess tournaments. But there were three tournaments that stood out among all, similar to Grand Slam events in tennis, and they were considered the most prestigious.
- The London Junior Championship. Unlike other tournaments, you had to qualify to participate based on strong performance at a qualifying event; hence, it was colloquially known as the “London Finals”. The top-ranked player who lived or went to school in London was the London Junior Champion for that age group. The top-ranked player overall (which was often, but not always, the same person), was the Event Winner, or could have claimed to have “won the London Finals”. This was equally prestigious, and so all the top players from the country would participate, with or without a London connection. There were many tournaments in London, and thus many champions of London tournaments, but only one London Junior Champion.
- The British Squad Championships, which was sponsored by Lloyds Bank. Very few chess tournaments had corporate sponsors, and this was one of the few, due to its prestige. Again, all the top players from the country were there, and it was arguably as strong as the British Squad Championships. But the winner was named the British Squad Champion, not the British Champion.
- The British Championships. This was the most prestigious event, even more so than the other two. It was sponsored initially by Kleinwort Grieveson (later Kleinwort Benson), and then Smith & Williamson. All the top players participated, and it was a particularly serious event. While most other tournaments took place over a weekend, with faster time controls, the British Championships took place over a whole week, with official championship time controls.
This context is to highlight how these differences matter. There are many tennis championships in the US, but the US Open is by far the most prestigious, and similarly for the French Open and Australian Open. There are many tennis players who win titles, and many chess players who win championships. But, every year, there is only one US Open champion, and one British chess champion.
The BWCA event with much smaller, with five rather than seven games. It was also much smaller in participation. For the British Championships, there were events for every age from U8 to U16 (and then U18 with no U17). For the BWCA, all females above 12 were put into an U21 tournament. The U18, U16, and U14 titles were given to the best-performing girls in the U21 tournament – with a caveat. The caveat is that Ruth Sheldon, the winner of the U18 title, was also U14; indeed, she is 15 months younger than Reeves. Thus, Reeves, was not the best-performing U14 player. Many tournaments allow you to win multiple titles; I won many U11 events when U10 and was given both the U10 and U11 title; and a girl who won an open tournament would be awarded both the Open and Girls’ title. The BWCA seemed to have a rule that you could be only awarded one title, so Ruth was only given the U18 title even though she was also the best-performing U16 and U14.
Furthermore, it’s not even clear how many U14 participants there were. U14 up to U21 comprises 7 age groups, and there were 28 participants, so assuming an even distribution, there would have been 28/7 = 4 players under-14. Thus, the four players who shared the U14 title could have been the only players; Reeves could have actually come joint last as well as joint first. (Moreover, the distribution was likely not even, but skewed towards older players, given it was an U21 tournament). As a sign of how small the tournament was, none of the British Girls’ U18, U15, U14, or U13 champions are listed as participating, only the U16 champion (Ruth Sheldon). (Caveat: they may have participated and not done as well: the results only listed the top 8 players). Arguably the top female U21 player, Harriet Hunt, is not listed as participating (she was not British Girls’ U21 champion because there is no British U21 championship; ages above 18 play in the open championship).
Regardless of how Ruth performed, or how many U14s, the BWCA had a rule that you could only win one title and thus bestowed the U14 title to Reeves and three others. Thus, it’s entirely legitimate for Reeves to claim that she was the BWCA Girls’ Under-14 Champion. But, this is quite different from being British Champion.
2. Does This Even Matter?
But should we even care? The British Championships took place 32 years ago. Shouldn’t we judge a Chancellor on her policies, rather than a chess event in 1993?
Indeed, by far the most relevant criterion for a politician is his/her policies, and there has been a very rich discussion on Reeves’ latest budget. However, this discussion is mainly subjective: different people might have different views and it is hard to prove whether they are right or wrong. However, whether she was British Under 14 Girls’ Champion is objective. And, while the event was 32 years ago, the misrepresentation is recent. The Guardian interview was given in July 2023 when she was Shadow Chancellor (and very likely to be Chancellor). Some people think that chess is an irrelevant or trivial pursuit. But it is Reeves who has repeatedly touted her chess credentials as evidence that she would make a good Chancellor. This makes it quite different to winning a hockey or dance competition. It is interesting to observe that some newspapers which once enthusiastically promoted the chess narrative are now dismissing chess as immaterial.
Certain issues are semantics and splitting hairs. Some commentators (e.g. Nassim Taleb) argue that the Nobel Prize in Economics is not a real Nobel Prize, and indeed its official title is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. It is not one of the original five Nobel Prizes established by Alfred Nobel’s will. But, it is clearly the most prestigious prize in economics, and there is no other Nobel Prize to confuse it with, so is fine to refer to it as the Nobel Prize.
In contrast, the British Girls’ Champion and the BWCA Champion are quite different. You could claim to be in Who’s Who, but it may not be the original A.C. Black Who’s Who; you could win a marathon in London but it is not the London Marathon; you could play in the Championship but that doesn’t mean you played in the Champions League. Some people use Professor in their title despite not being professors (but visiting lecturers), or Doctor if they only have an honorary doctorate. People claim to have given TED talks that are actually TEDx talks, or that their book is a bestseller despite not being on any recognised bestseller list (e.g. New York Times or Sunday Times). If a student at Oxford Brookes is asked where they go to university, they shouldn’t answer “Oxford” even though “where” technically asks for a geographic location.
Newspapers previously highlighted how Reeves’ Who’s Who entry listed a publication in the Journal of Political Economy when it was actually the European Journal of Political Economy. To an academic, such an inaccuracy would be sacrilege, as the former is one of the most prestigious journals in the world and the latter is much more minor. But I actually don’t think this is as problematic: if you’re speaking to a general audience, like the reader of Who’s Who, they won’t how difficult it is to publish in the Journal of Political Economy, so they wouldn’t have attached much weight to it anyway. Similarly, if Reeves said she was West Yorkshire champion when she was actually East Yorkshire champion, that wouldn’t matter even if the former was much more prestigious, because the public wouldn’t know. If she said she was Greater London champion when she was Central London champion, this would also be immaterial, even though Greater London is clearly bigger than Central London, because both would be considered minor to anyone outside the chess world.
But British Champion is different. To be British Champion – in anything – is a major achievement. It signifies that you are the best in the country. If you’re British Champion in chess, this carries substantial intellectual weight and an authority in strategic thinking: qualities that Reeves herself has promoted. You don’t need to be a chess insider to understand what British Champion means, just like even a non-tennis player understands the significance of the US Open.
People make mistakes. If it were an isolated misstep, then this would not be an issue. However, it seems to be part of a general pattern, such as claiming to have been at the Bank of England for a decade, stating that she was an economist at HBOS, and allegedly misrepresenting the OBR forecasts to justify tax hikes. It may also include claiming to have adhered to her manifesto commitment not to increase taxes on working people, by increasing other taxes that are arguably more damaging to ensure technical compliance – and even though freezing allowances increases taxes through fiscal drag, and employers’ National Insurance has the same effect as employees’ National Insurance. If you misrepresent the truth for small things, even though they can be easily verified, you may misrepresent the truth for big things.
Some may think the issue is relevant for the above reasons. Others may think it is irrelevant, and they are entitled to make that inference. My goal is to alert readers to new information, not to tell them what to do with that information or whether it’s material. If carbon-emitting companies earn higher returns, some readers could conclude it’s immaterial since climate change is more important than financial performance. If demographic diversity has no effect on company profitability, some could argue it’s irrelevant because diversity is a human rights issue. (Outside of my field, many claimed that pointing out that the EU doesn’t cost the UK £350 billion per week is irrelevant because they would have voted for Brexit anyway.) I am not a member of any political party and have voted for Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats in different elections. My interest in this particular issue is my work on bias and misinformation, and my background in chess. I similarly comment on inaccurate conclusions drawn from research if I have expertise in the topic (see this website). This includes conclusions that go against my own political beliefs, e.g. Brexit.
Beyond Reeves, it also matters for the journalists who spun a convenient story without checking the facts and falling for the narrative fallacy – that Reeves will be a great Chancellor because of the skills taught in chess, and that there was systematic prejudice against girls and state schools. Sexism exists in many walks of life, but no chessplayer wanted to face Harriet Hunt or Ruth Sheldon. While we knew all the top players of our age group, we had no idea whether they went to a state school or private school, and if we did, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was how good you are. This is what’s great about chess. There are many things that are affected by subjective bias (e.g. judges of music competitions), but not chess. In particular, in chess, children would often play against adults (which you’d never see in sport) and beat them. It was ingrained in everyone that ability is what counted.
Ultimately, this episode illustrates why accuracy matters – not because a chess title from 1993 determines anyone’s fitness for office, but because it is the foundation of public trust. Chess teaches us the importance of clarity and honesty; political narratives should aim for the same standard.