Sir Keir Starmer has appointed a former Treasury insider as a key aide amid doubts over Rachel Reeves’ economic credibility.
Olaf Henricson-Bell, a career civil servant, has been made the new head of the No 10 policy unit.
He was the most senior communications adviser to three successive chancellors under the previous Tory government.
It comes as questions mount about Labour’s economic approach amid market jitters over the Chancellor’s direction of travel and £40 billion in tax rises in last year’s Budget.
On Monday, Sir Keir cast doubt over Ms Reeves’ future by refusing to guarantee that she would still be Chancellor at the next election. His spokesman was later forced to insist that she would be kept in post.
Downing Street pointed to Mr Henricson-Bell’s tenure as press secretary to the chancellor and head of communications at the Treasury between February 2019 and June 2021.
During this time, he worked closely with Lord Hammond, Sir Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak during their stints in No 11.
His appointment comes after The Sunday Times reported that Sir Keir was being urged to appoint a chief economic adviser, even by figures in the Treasury, amid the Government’s economic woes. Such a move would significantly undermine Ms Reeves’ authority.
Last week, the Treasury was forced to intervene in order to stabilise the financial markets amid growing concern over the impact of Ms Reeves’s first fiscal event last October.
It issued the first statement of its kind since the 2022 mini-Budget, trying to dismiss as “pure speculation” any suggestions rising debt costs had wiped out the Chancellor’s headroom.
The Institute of Directors (IoD) warned on Monday that an economic slowdown since Labour’s landslide election victory had almost eroded Ms Reeves’s flexibility altogether.
‘Fizzled out’
The IoD said business confidence had “evaporated” and economic growth had “fizzled out” since she was given the keys to No 11 in July.
Anna Leach, the chief economist at the IoD, said: “The snuffing out of growth in the latter part of 2024 will leave the Chancellor with little fiscal room if any.”
Ms Reeves has presided over a number of unpopular decisions including a rise in employers’ National Insurance and stripping 10 million pensioners of their winter fuel payments.
Prior to his appointment by Sir Keir in recent days, Mr Henricson-Bell was working as the Foreign Office’s EU director, a role he had held for almost four years.
He took on the job in June 2021 as Boris Johnson sought to capitalise on the benefits of Brexit, spending the first year in the Cabinet Office.
‘Reset’ Britain
More recently, he had a key role in the Labour Government’s attempts to “reset” Britain’s relationship with the European Union during its first six months in power.
His work at the Foreign Office between 2008 and 2019 included work in its counter-terror department, the forced marriage unit and two years spent as head of EU communications at the British Embassy in Paris.
On his LinkedIn profile, the new No 10 policy head describes himself as “an experienced and dynamic leader, bringing different thinking and drive to solving problems”.
The biography continues: “Expertise and experience in the heart of Government on EU issues and communications as well as working with NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and the private sector – people are always the key.”
The New Statesman reported that he will replace Ninrenji Pandit, who only became Sir Keir’s principal private secretary in October as part of a shake-up after Sue Gray left Downing Street.
Ms Pandit is a former digital executive at the NHS who then focused on health policy in No 10. Her work during the pandemic was once praised as “brilliant” by Dominic Cummings.
A Cambridge politics graduate, Mr Henricson-Bell began his career working in advocacy at the Human Rights Watch quango in Geneva.
He is the twin brother of Torsten Bell, an economist and former head of the Resolution Foundation who became a Labour MP at the general election last July.
