School election was Reeves sisters first step into politics

Pair have gone on to become the UK's most powerful siblings

- DAVID MADDOX

When Neil Kinnock’s Labour suffered a humiliating shock defeat to John Major’s Tories in 1992, he would not have known that a school mock election coinciding with the national vote would launch two of his party’s future stars. At Cator Park School for Girls, in Beckenham, a 13-year-old Rachel Reeves decided to run in the mock election. Her campaign manager was her sister Ellie, who was a year younger.

Now Rachel is chancellor of the exchequer, while Ellie is chair of the Labour Party. Both are pivotal figures in Keir Starmer’s top team and were hand-picked by him to change the country and make the party a winning machine.

The last time two siblings were so powerful was when David Miliband was foreign secretary and his younger brother Ed was environment secretary in Gordon Brown’s government. In the case of the Milibands it did not end well, with Ed beating David in the 2010 leadership election in bitter circumstances.

But, unlike the Milibands, the two Reeves sisters were not brought up in a politically obsessive household, Ellie Reeves has revealed in an exclusive interview with The Independent.