‘He’s a very, very handsome man’: Meet the ex-pop star turning heads in the UK Treasury

LONDON — He’s a former pop star, gay icon and heart-throb who traveled the world with a chart-topping band.

And Neil Amin-Smith, former violinist in Grammy-award winning band Clean Bandit, still has a loyal fan base fawning over his dashing looks, cool demeanor and stylish attire. It’s just a slightly nerdier one now, in the corridors of the U.K. government.

His arrival as one of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ most trusted advisers, after swapping strings for spreadsheets, has turned heads in the U.K.’s Treasury.

“He’s unusually gorgeous, and quite stylish,” said one Treasury official, granted anonymity to speak freely.

The award-winning musician has taken on a powerful role as the Labour Party’s main political adviser for policy affecting the City of London, sitting on Reeves’ economic council. He’s heavily involved in flagship policies like the launch of a national wealth fund and a review of the country’s pensions system.

Most political advisers try to stay in the shadows, particularly those in the Treasury where a sense of understated order and balancing the books are the daily obsessions. But with his effortless cool, multiple earrings and open-shirted style of a top musician, Amin-Smith, 34, might find that more difficult than most.

“He’s a very, very handsome man,” said a former Labour official. “He’s a bit of a popstar, but he doesn’t rub it in your face. It’s a kind of quiet, confident coolness.”

Musical history

Amin-Smith’s current job is a stark change from a decade ago when he performed the haunting violin solo that opened Clean Bandit’s hit Rather Be live on British television.

He was a founding member of the band at Cambridge University. It grew out of a string quartet in 2008, playing the violin and piano in a musical style that fuses pop, dance and classical music.

Once described as “the poshest band in music” — Amin-Smith went to Westminster School, a highly academic private school dating from the fourteenth century where annual fees can reach over £50,000 — Clean Bandit went on to top the U.K. charts, attracting global acclaim and winning a Grammy award for best dance recording in 2015.

He could have been a spy. Amin-Smith told the Daily Telegraph he turned down offers from MI6 and the Foreign Office to pursue the band, a fact which has only added to the thrill around him in the halls of Westminster.

“Both very tempting, but no real regrets,” he said in 2015. “I don’t think I would have wanted to be working in the national interest as such.”

As the band’s star rose, Amin-Smith appeared on the front cover of Gay Times magazine and was open about his relationship with Olly Alexander, the lead singer of Years & Years — who went on to be Britain’s Eurovision Song Contest entry this year.

“It’s important for people to see you can be happy as a gay couple, and as a young gay couple,” Amin-Smith told Capital FM in 2015.

But the relationship ended. And in 2016 Amin-Smith had a change of heart about his future, announcing he was leaving Clean Bandit.

Mysterious and smart

Ditching the glamor of the music industry, he put his Cambridge economic masters to work by joining think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies as a research economist that same year.

From there, he moved to the Treasury in 2019 as a senior policy adviser before becoming part of Reeves’ close-knit team in 2022.

Officials say his rise over a period of merely eight years to the very top of economic policymaking is due to sharp political acumen and a keen intelligence — without, at least obviously, sharp-elbowing his way to the top.

“He knew his stuff, was eloquent and personable,” said one financial lobbyist who met with him. “I didn’t know he was in a rock band! He did have a sizeable earring but I didn’t make much of it.”

Not since former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, known for his trademark leather jacket, has a man in economic policy attracted so much attention for a rebellious sense of style.

“I don’t think I ever saw him wear a tie,” said the former Labour official. “He was always in some kind of cool outfit with a kind of open shirt, when everyone else was in a boring jacket and tie.”

While Amin-Smith’s personal politics aren’t obvious, his laid back style and near-celebrity status lend him an air of mystery, which only endears him to other staffers in Britain’s otherwise stuffy economic establishment.

And with Reeves busy preparing for the U.K.’s International Investment Summit in October, plus the Labour Party’s first budget the same month, Amin-Smith will be at the forefront of try to drag the British economy out of the doldrums in his role as special adviser, or SpAd, in HMT, as the Treasury is known.

“I’m sure many of HMT’s officials will prepare for SpAd meetings with a new enthusiasm,” the Treasury official said.