Andy Burnham’s brutal reshuffle achieved what Sir Keir Starmer never could: creating a faction of Starmerites. And they’ve already showing their teeth.
In the pub in Kentish Town by Monday mid-afternoon, Starmer supped from a pint, toasting his own political wake. In Downing Street, his successor kept anxious allies waiting as he appointed his Cabinet while juggling the other commitments of a first-day prime minister. Talk to the US President as closest ally: tick; appoint Chancellor: tick; take call from Archbishop of Canterbury: tick. No wonder the reshuffle dragged on until the small hours.
When the fog cleared, the undoubted winner was the North West. Greater Manchester is heavily represented with five MPs in the new Cabinet, compared to just two for London. In fact, there are now more members of the Cabinet with a tattoo of a Manchester worker bee – Burnham, Angela Rayner and Jonathan Reynolds – than there are Old Etonians. Just one who wore a tailcoat to school: Kanishka Narayan was appointed AI minister.
Meanwhile, there was Labour grumbling that although Burnham has appointed a record number of women to the Cabinet, outnumbering men for the first time at 12-11, he only gave one, Shabana Mahmood, a position in one of the Great Offices of State as Home Secretary. Labour sources also pointed out that inside No 10, there are scant women in senior positions.
However, there was one significant female winner. By far the most powerful woman in Government is Louise Haigh. In addition to her role at the Cabinet Office, Haigh is also the First Secretary of State – a title that has not been held by a woman since one of her political heroes, Barbara Castle, was made the second-highest ranking Cabinet minister by Harold Wilson in 1968. Haigh will oversee No 10 and the soon-to-be-established No 10 North as well as the Cabinet Office, bringing together some functions and powers, while shrugging off the civil service administrative and HR tasks to a new agency.
What became abundantly clear early on is the economic direction will mostly be set by Burnham himself from No 10. An announcement on energy prices landed on Tuesday morning before newly installed Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey had a chance to get himself a Treasury canteen card.
Scrapping 5 per cent VAT on household electricity over the winter months is a headline announcement designed to show that Burnham is committed to addressing the cost of living crisis, amounting to about £45 a year for average households or £3.75 a month.
This announcement amounted to a warm fuzzy feeling more than substantial spending commitment but nonetheless caused a row straightaway, not least because a lot of the benefit of cutting VAT goes to better-off, larger households. No doubt the Socialist Campaign Group will drink a toast to £850m of public spending contributing to Mick Jagger being warm this winter.
Burnham pledged to fund it using money allocated for the digital ID scheme, which he scrapped even before getting to No 10. But even a cursory glance at the Office for Budget Responsibility documents would have shown the money is yet to be identified through existing departmental budgets.
Early on Tuesday morning, presumably wandering around Parliament in his Bermuda shorts dressed for the summer, Starmer’s former chief secretary Darren Jones took to social media to question whether the commitment had been properly costed.
Later, Jones told friends that his “red lines” include “unfunded tax cuts”. But the intervention annoyed Burnham loyalists because it allowed Conservative shadow Chancellor Mel Stride to claim the new Prime Minister is using “smoke and mirrors on the public finances”.
And all on Burnham’s first full day in office.
Jones’s intervention had the effect of prodding Burnham into making his fiscal position clearer. At his Cabinet meeting at lunchtime, the cameras were allowed to film some opening remarks. Burnham deliberately made clear that departmental cuts are coming – “difficult decisions” would need to be made, he said, adding: “We have to take a really hard look at what our priorities are” to “show fiscal discipline.”
Sitting opposite Burnham at Cabinet, Healey is likely not to approve substantial increases in debt as his economic perspective aligns closely with the Prime Minister. During Gordon Brown’s premiership, he oversaw regional economic policy and has since maintained that fiscal devolution needs rocket boosters. He was a proponent of greater social housing provision when he held the ministerial portfolio in 2009. Some Starmerites allege he’ll be forced into more borrowing for the military, even if via an accountancy trick which rebrands more debt as defence bonds.
But poacher-turned-gamekeeper Healey has one of the most difficult jobs in Government, not least because his detractors say he could never properly make the detailed case for increased defence spending.
Burnham also appears to have listened to the lobbying from his own MPs to keep Mahmood out of the Treasury, but keeping her at the Home Office is also a signal she is trusted to implement stringent immigration crackdowns, both legal and illegal. It’s an early indication Burnham may not wholly satisfy the desires of Labour’s soft left who want her to water down her proposals. But sometimes the left needs saving from themselves; they can be guilty of underestimating the electoral threat posed by Reform UK.
Retaining Pat McFadden as Work and Pensions Secretary is smart politics; he has already made the case for welfare reform with swathes of the parliamentary party; half the work of avoiding another damaging rebellion is underway.
The individual with the toughest crowd is Wes Streeting, facing down a military establishment who think every defence secretary should be a man in uniform or look like one. Former soldier Dan Jarvis losing his job landed particularly badly with the hawkish end of the Labour movement. But Streeting’s talent is politics, he will work with Healey to secure the military the money they’ve asked for. Top brass should give him the benefit of the doubt.
Some in Labour were taken by surprise by the brutality of Burnham’s reshuffle, which saw Starmer’s key faces disappear from government. They thought perhaps Burnham would reflect the wider geographic makeup of the party than emphasise rewarding loyalists largely from the North West.
MPs are already organised in WhatsApp groups by region, with those from rural and coastal areas already annoyed that Manchester has been effectively subbed in as the new London.
Burnham sacked Reeves, David Lammy, Peter Kyle, Steve Reed and Lord Hermer. This old guard knows where the fiscal bodies are buried. Perhaps the rejected Starmerites will unionise in their own WhatsApp group of outrage to keep a beady eye on Burnham’s plans. The new Prime Minister has certainly succeeded where the last one didn’t; he’s created a faction of Starmerites.
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