Friday 15 May 2026 11:41 am
What does new City minister Rachel Blake have in store for the Square Mile?
By: Samuel Norman and Felix Armstrong
The Westminster drama has hit the City in more ways than one. After Wes Streeting's resignation triggered a mini-reshuffle, Felix Armstrong and Samuel Norman take a look at what the new City minister might have in store.
In just under two years, the City 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 just eight months later and be replaced by Lucy Rigby in the reshuffle that came in the wake of Angela Rayner's resignation. And another eight-month stint later, Rigby herself has been taken up into the cabinet, climbing the Treasury rankings after chief secretary James Murray was sent to the health brief as Sir Keir Starmer scrambled to deal with Wes Streeting's resignation. Rigby's departure from economic secretary left open the crucial role that is designed to bridge the gap between the government and the financial services industry. Enter: Rachel Blake.
Treasury Brain?
Blake, the MP for Cities of London and Westminster, returns to the Treasury after serving as an adviser to Gordon Brown on policy during his tenure as Chancellor. Her role didn't overlap too heavily with the City brief, however, with her main focus on planning policy and the delivery of new homes. Whilst only serving a year in the Treasury, before heading to Berkley Group property developer St George's, the appointment may renew chatter of the 'Treasury Orthodoxy'. The concept of 'Treasury Brain' was first thrust into the mainstream from Liz Truss, who criticised the ingrained institutional culture of the department. Though in a clear difference to some of the Labour cabinet, she has experience in the private sector, serving as a partner at Warre Constable, a firm providing professional advice on property management, and as a chair of the advisory board at biotech holding company Elite Growth.
Blake threw her own hat into the political arena in 2014, where 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 also a councillor for Bow East, though he was ousted unceremoniously by the Greens in this month's local elections. Inheriting the post, Blake will find her docket quickly filled to the brim with rallying calls from the City to accelerate the deregulation agenda of the Treasury and ease the outsized burden the UK's financial sector faces.
A war on 'dirty money'
Blake has been outspoken about her disdain for "dirty money" and called for the government to take on illicit finance in a way that helps create economic calm. As well as a one-year stint on the Treasury Committee, Blake co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on anti-corruption and responsible tax. "Keeping dirty money out of the City of London and homes and communities across our country is vital for our national security, as well as our economic stability," she said, during the Commons in March 2025. Two days later in a debate on Political Finance Rules she took a shot at digital assets: "Our financial flows are becoming more elusive, with cryptocurrency enabling money laundering at scale".
Blake took on the brief just weeks after Rigby pledged the government would bring forward legislation to "cut administrative burdens" for companies wanting to provide stablecoin payments in a bid to grab a slice of the fast-growing digital assets market. The Square Mile MP may bring a fresh perspective to the Treasury's ailing mission for economic growth after branding the "dirty money" crisis in her own constituency as a blocker to economic prosperity. "My constituency has far and away the most dirty money laundered through both the City of London and the Westminster property market," Blake said in a speech at King's College London last year. "Levels of money laundering in London corrode our communities, damage democracy around the world, and block the growth prospects of our capital's economy."
An ambitious housing advocate
Perhaps surprisingly, Blake's political career has been defined in large part by a focus on another government brief: housing. In her first Treasury job, she was part of the team behind Dame Kate Barker's land use review, which Gordon Brown described as the "most detailed" report on housing "in 50 years". The report recommended that the government set up "market affordability goals," force local authorities to be more flexible in land allocation and establish regular reviews of the housing market. The Home Builders Federation (HBF), a leading industry body, said in 2024 that only 11 of Barker's 36 recommendations were put in place. If the government had listened to Barker in full, the HBF said, the UK would have two million more homes today.
Blake has been vocal on the housing crisis. She is vice-chair of the Labour Housing Group, had previously served as the secretary of London's Labour Housing Group, and regularly writes for "progressive" housing policy blog Red Brick. The new City minister has been highly critical of previous governments' pace on housing delivery, which she says has left the country without 4.3m "missing homes". Blake has been critical of central government delays over planning. During her time in Tower Hamlets Council, she said much of the three years her local authority spent working on a local housing plan was wasted by "waiting" for the Tory government to schedule a planning inspection. Local authorities should be handed "more effective powers to intervene when sites are not being developed," she wrote in 2020.
Blake has backed Labour's divisive renters' rights act, claiming that the new powers ensure that "the ability to remain in your home does not depend on your willingness to accept whatever terms are put before you". But some property experts have warned that the reforms – which include ending no-fault evictions and fixed-term contracts – could force landlords out of the sector because they may fear being powerless to remove a "problem" tenant. Leading house trade body Real Estate UK said there is "significant institutional capital" poised to invest in British housing, if the government can encourage confidence. The body's chief executive, Danny Pinder, told City AM: "We look forward to working with [Blake] to pull down the barriers to building more homes of all tenures, boosting the economy and creating jobs at all levels of the supply chain."
Loyalty to the Starmer regime
Amidst the leadership tremors, Blake has remained loyal to the Prime Minister, making her quick rise to the Treasury minister post less of a surprise. On the government's wider agenda, Blake has been a vocal supporter of the Employment Rights Bill, which has been a long-running headache for top financial names. City lobby groups have highlighted concerns about how the new "right to switch off" and protections against "fire and rehire" will interact with the watchdog's demands for high-stakes accountability and non-financial misconduct rules.
In a speech last year Blake said: "One in every fifty-two British workers is employed in the City of London, and every one of them will have additional protections against unfair dismissal from day one in their job, even in the City's most powerful institutions." In the same address, she also took the opportunity to leap to the defence of Labour's tax-raising Budgets. She said Labour had raised taxes in a way "which recognises just how high the tax burden is on working people, focusing these increases on those with the broadest shoulders". The sentiment echoed that of the top of government, which reiterated the remarks to defend its cash grab on some of Britain's biggest wealth creators through the non-dom changes and private schools tax.
Blake is one of the 'more than 100 MPs' that have signed a letter supporting Starmer to stay in post, meaning, for now, Starmer has an ally in his fourth City minister. But with a leadership row brewing, the Square Mile could soon be in for number five under a new Prime Minister.
