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Cabinet scribe detail11/7/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Shabana Mahmood, who was Labour’s national campaigns coordinator, takes over the shadow justice secretary role held by Steve Reed since 2021. Other frontbenchers responsible for Starmer’s “five missions”, such as Wes Streeting on health, Bridget Phillipson on education and Ed Miliband on net zero, remain in post. She was also in the room while the Labour leader conducted by phone his notably smooth reshuffle, a marked contrast to the chaos that followed changes to his top team in May 2021, after the Hartlepool byelection, when Rayner fought off attempts to demote her.Īs MPs returned to parliament after the summer recess, senior shadow cabinet members including Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, and Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, stayed in their roles. Sue Gray, Starmer’s new chief of staff who officially began her new job on Monday, played a leading role in the reshuffle, including conducting some of the negotiations with Rayner over her wish to retain responsibility for Labour’s new deal for working people. Momentum, the hard-left group, said the reshuffle represented “a further narrowing behind a Blairite agenda” that was unfit for the challenges of today. Nevertheless, even some Labour moderates were uncomfortable about the so-called “Blairite takeover”, which they said was orchestrated in part by unelected party officials. One senior ally said the reshuffle would “put round pegs in round holes”, bring in heavyweight experience – including a handful of MPs with experience as ministers and aides – and put the party on an election footing by bolstering its political operation. Starmer said that having “put in the hard yards to change the Labour party”, it now had a “strong team on the pitch” in the run-up to the election that could deliver the change the country needed. Peter Kyle, another former Blair aide, has been promoted to shadow science secretary. Liz Kendall, formerly a shadow health minister and a longstanding party aide in the Blair era who ran against Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership in 2015, has replaced Jonathan Ashworth as shadow work and pensions secretary. ![]()
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