When Keir Starmer put the final touches to his shadow cabinet reshuffle over the summer recess, his thoughts were not just on who would help propel Labour into government at the next election, but who could run the country if they are successful.
His top team now includes three MPs who served in the last Labour cabinet – Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper and Hilary Benn – at least four who were ministers under Tony Blair or Gordon Brown and three, including self-proclaimed Blairites Peter Kyle and Liz Kendall, who were special advisers.
Senior MPs on the soft-left of the party, however, are concerned that with the demotion of Lisa Nandy to the international development brief and Jonathan Ashworth’s move to a more political role, the Labour left has been sidelined from the big policy beats.
One shadow minister said: “It’s an entirely factional takeover. It’s all the Blairites and they’ll all be champing at the bit to prove themselves. I don’t suppose much will change day to day but it’s definitely a shoring up of the right of the party”.
Senior aides do not deny that Starmer’s first reshuffle since November 2021 represents a march of the Blairites, but one added: “That shows a march of experience, doesn’t it? We’ve got to get the balance right between winning the next election and then actually running the country. It’s about getting round pegs in round holes”.
One shadow cabinet minister said: “If you look around the table there are a lot of people who were in government or who were advisers last time. It’s not necessarily about them being Blairites, it’s just that they served. Experience counts for a lot at this stage”.
Starmer, with his years running the Crown Prosecution Service, has governance experience in abundance, bolstered by bringing in former top civil servant Sue Gray as his chief of staff. However, he has been criticised for lacking political instincts so beefing up the political side of the operation was a priority.
Pat McFadden, who has worked for Labour since the 1980s and was Blair’s political secretary, is a key figure, taking on the national campaign coordinator role in which he will lead the party’s election strategy group. He also inherits Rayner’s Cabinet Office brief and will work with Gray to get the party ready for government.
As well as promoting experienced operators, Starmer also had to make sure he got what some Labour MPs have called “the Angie question” right, after the explosive fallout of a previous reshuffle in which he tried to demote her but ended up having to smooth things over by giving her an even bigger role.
Allies of both the Labour leader and his deputy insisted that relations have improved dramatically since those dark days. With a mandate of her own from party members, she is unsackable, but has made no secret of her desire for Starmer to confirm she would also be his deputy prime minister if he ends up in No 10.
However, despite briefings that she had pushed to be given the levelling up brief, allies claimed that she was offered the job and had never asked for it. Instead, they said, her reshuffle “red line” was retaining responsibility for Labour’s new deal for working people.
When Starmer conducted his reshuffle over the phone from the Harriet Harman room in his suite of Commons offices on Monday morning he was flanked by his new chief of staff, along with Alan Campbell, the party’s chief whip, and other senior aides.
Labour insiders have said that Gray, who only started working for Starmer at the weekend, had been key to making sure that the reshuffle went without a hiccup. “Her hands were all over it,” one said. “It was done quickly, slickly and ruthlessly”.
Labour aides acknowledge that not everybody is happy with how the reshuffle has turned out, but there have been few public grumblings. “They know that it’s all about winning the election now,” one said. “We’ve got experience. We’ve got discipline. But we know there’s still more to do. This team now has to deliver”.
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