Angela Rayner will become deputy prime minister if Labour wins power and will take on the levelling up brief, in a long-awaited shadow cabinet reshuffle that also saw several MPs on the right of the party promoted before the next general election. In a broad swathe of changes in which MPs on the Blairite wing largely prospered at the expense of those seen as being more on the soft left, Lisa Nandy, the former shadow levelling up secretary, was demoted to the international development brief. With Keir Starmer seeking to get his favoured team in place before the election, there was a big promotion for Pat McFadden from No 2 in the Treasury team to running the Cabinet Office brief and becoming Labour’s national campaigns coordinator.
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. Peter Kyle, another former Blair aide, has been promoted to shadow science secretary. 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. 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. Nevertheless, even some Labour moderates were uncomfortable about the so-called “Blairite takeover”, which they said was orchestrated in part by unelected party officials. Momentum, the hard-left group, said the reshuffle represented “a further narrowing behind a Blairite agenda” that was unfit for the challenges of today. 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. 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. As 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. 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. Shabana Mahmood, who was Labour’s national campaigns coordinator, takes over the shadow justice secretary role held by Steve Reed since 2021. Mahmood, a qualified barrister, is a Starmer ally who has been credited with helping transform the party and its campaign machine. Also on the move was Lucy Powell, formerly shadow culture secretary, who has been replaced by Thangam Debbonaire, who was shadow leader of the Commons. In a direct swap, Powell becomes the shadow Commons leader, where she will take over planning for Labour’s first king’s speech if it wins power. Peter Kyle, who was shadow Northern Ireland secretary, takes over the previously vacant role shadowing the science, innovation and technology department, which was created only in February. Kyle is replaced in the Northern Ireland brief by Hilary Benn, the veteran former minister. Darren Jones, the fast-rising backbencher who chairs the Commons business committee, had been tipped for this job but instead becomes shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Reeves’s No 2, in place of McFadden. McFadden will be supported by Ashworth, who takes on a shadow “minister for the Today programme” role and will help with election preparations, along with Ellie Reeves, who has long experience within the party and will sit on its ruling NEC. Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow international trade secretary, has been moved to a more general role, becoming shadow minister without portfolio. Reaction to the changes was initially muted among those affected, with a source close to Nandy saying she was “a team player and looks forward to getting stuck into the new role”. One ally, however, said she was “devastated” by the move. She will attend cabinet despite the brief being part of the Foreign Office. Rosena Allin-Khan resigned as shadow mental health minister, a departure understood to be connected to her frustration that the role would not be given cabinet status. Preet Gill, replaced by Nandy in the international development job, expressed at least passive annoyance by reposting a tweet from a charity campaigner who said they were “absolutely gutted” Gill had gone. Confirming speculation that there would be changes in the junior ranks of the shadow cabinet, the reshuffle began when the shadow environment secretary, Jim McMahon, long tipped for demotion, announced he would be stepping down. One party insider suggested he had “seen the writing on the wall” concerning his future in Starmer’s top team. The reshuffle follows months of speculation that Rayner could be moved as Starmer attempted to slim down his team to mirror that of the government before the next election. She joked last October that “I’ll definitely be deputy prime minister, otherwise Keir’s got trouble,” describing herself as “John Prescott in a skirt” to Starmer’s Tony Blair.