The winners and losers in Keir Starmer’s shake-up – POLITICO

LONDON — Keir Starmer revamped his Labour frontbench Monday — and not everyone’s thrilled.

As the U.K. opposition leader prepares for a general election next year, Starmer chose to promote key figures from his party’s right flank, demoting one-time leadership rival Lisa Nandy and a host of other figures from the party’s so-called “soft left” faction.

“I’m really pleased that having put in the hard yards to change the Labour Party, we now have such a strong team on the pitch that is ready to deliver the change our country desperately needs,” Starmer declared as the dust settled.

But a spokesperson for the left-wing Labour campaign group Momentum offered up another take, berating the “promotion of a narrow band of Blairites unwilling to offer the decisive change the country is crying out for.”

With polls suggesting Labour is on course to form the next British government, here’s POLITICO’s guide to the reshuffle winners and losers.

The winners

Tony Blair: No, really. The former Labour prime minister might be 16 years out of power — but his followers now look like a force to be reckoned with in Starmer’s Labour.

Labour’s “Blairites” — named for their devotion to the former leader’s brand of ultra-centrist politics — were boosted further in the reshuffle.

Two Blair-era special advisers were handed big promotions. Liz Kendall — kept out of a full Shadow Cabinet job ever since she lost badly to left-winger Jeremy Corbyn in the 2015 leadership election — takes on the totemic work and pensions brief, overseeing social security. And Peter Kyle now has responsibility for shaping Labour tech policy as shadow science minister, one of the most coveted gigs in British policy.

Other Blairite figures including the ex-business committee chairman Darren Jones – who gets a key gig scrutinizing public spending – were also promoted into full cabinet positions.

Pat McFadden: The wily McFadden — another Blair-era special adviser — was already highly influential in Starmer’s party. Now, as Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator and shadow Cabinet Office minister, he’ll have a huge role in the upcoming election fight.

The Scotsman was sidelined during the left-wing leadership of Starmer’s predecessor Corbyn, but was handed the role of chief secretary to the Treasury in 2021, where he became a key advocate of — and the man who enforced — fiscal discipline within Labour.

In his election coordination role, McFadden will work across Labour’s frontbench team to set its strategy for fighting the election and ensure message discipline. His other job will see him become closely involved with the planning for how Labour will actually implement its policy plans if it does win that election.

Angela Rayner: Thanks to the Labour rulebook, the elected deputy leader of the party has an automatic spot at the top table — something Starmer discovered to his chagrin in a previous botched reshuffle.

Trade unionist firebrand Rayner, seen as being on the party’s left, has often clashed with the technocratic Starmer, who has pursued efforts to drive the party toward the fabled political center-ground.

But despite their differences, Starmer opted not to try and clip his deputy’s wings on this occasion. He instead moved her into the important levelling-up and housing brief, while naming her “shadow deputy prime minister” — the first-ever confirmation that Rayner would serve as Starmer’s official number two in any Labour government.

The boost for Rayner reflects her important link with the party’s grassroots membership and its trades union backers.

The losers

Lisa Nandy: The 2020 Labour leadership election significantly raised the profile of third-placed Nandy, seen as a strong communicator with a clear sense of how Labour lost support in its traditional heartlands. She was promptly given the senior job of shadow foreign secretary by the victorious Starmer.

Nandy was later moved to become shadow levelling-up secretary, a still senior gig with responsibility for setting Labour’s local government and housing policy – an area on which she’s written extensively.

But after a summer of rumors and briefings that suggested Starmer’s one-time rival might be sacked, she was on Monday moved again — downwards. Nandy will now serve as Labour’s shadow cabinet minister for international development, a post that does not even have a government ministry to shadow since the Conservatives merged it with the Foreign Office in 2020.

As a key figure on the soft left — which in recent Labour history has at times straddled the divide between the party’s centrists and the Corbynite left — Nandy was seen as a possible future leader, something that may have worried those close to Starmer.

The cast of 2020: Nandy wasn’t the only soft left figure given an effective demotion in Monday’s reshuffle.

Starmer’s first shadow Cabinet when he became leader was a feast of soft lefties, featuring rising stars Anneliese Dodds, Nandy and Nick Thomas-Symonds in the three most senior shadow roles. Dodds was the first to move, but now Nandy and Thomas-Symonds have both been shuffled downwards. Thomas-Symonds was demoted Monday from the trade brief into a cabinet office role.

An attempt to effectively demote Shadow Mental Health Minister Rosena Allin-Khan by downgrading her post from a full shade cabinet position also failed, with Allin-Khan instead opting to quit.

The promotion of the Blairite Liz Kendall to the work and pensions brief also sees shadow cabinet survivor Jon Ashworth — one of the few to keep his job after Starmer succeeded Corbyn — move into the less senior role of shadow paymaster general.

Starmer’s new shadow cabinet is barely recognizable from the one he appointed three years ago.

Jeremy Corbyn: When Starmer became Labour leader in 2020, he gave some shadow ministerial roles to a small band of Corbyn allies. With the possible exception of Rayner, all of those are now gone — and increasingly in their place are the politicians that many of Labour’s arch-leftwingers had grown to mistrust.

An elevation to Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary for Hilary Benn is likely to particularly exercise Labour’s vanquished Corbynites, given Benn was sacked by Corbyn for perceived disloyalty back in 2016. That sacking triggered an ultimately fruitless attempt by centrist Labour MPs to remove Corbyn from his position.

Promotions for Blairites who did not take frontbench positions under Corbyn will only increase the left’s ire.