(Bloomberg) —
Keir Starmer, leader of the U.K.’s main opposition Labour Party, shook up his top team in a surprise reshuffle Monday aimed at capitalizing on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s tumbling popularity and Conservative Party infighting.
Former minister Yvette Cooper, who served under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, made a comeback to the front bench as shadow home secretary. David Lammy, also a veteran former minister under Blair and Brown, was promoted to shadow foreign secretary.
That meant a move for Lisa Nandy who will now shadow Michael Gove in the “leveling up” brief, Johnson’s slogan for the aspiration of bringing prosperity to all areas of the U.K. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves retained her role.
Ed Miliband lost his shadow business secretary role to Jonathan Reynolds, but will retain his brief on climate change and net zero. Nick Thomas-Symonds, formerly shadow home secretary, will shadow Anne-Marie Trevelyan in the international trade role.
“With this reshuffle, we are a smaller, more focused shadow cabinet that mirrors the shape of the government we are shadowing,” Starmer said in an emailed statement. “We must hold the Conservative government to account on behalf of the public and demonstrate that we are the right choice to form the next government.”
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The announcement late Monday followed a morning of apparent chaos, when Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, was not briefed on the reshuffle before she went out to represent the party on morning television and radio broadcasts.
Rayner had been briefed by the time she gave a major speech on how Labour plans to clean up British politics, after a slew of negative headlines over ethics and paid lobbying predominantly targeting Johnson’s Conservatives.
For Starmer, though, it was far from ideal that such an event would inevitably be overshadowed by journalists’ questions on the personnel changes — nor that Rayner appeared to know very little about them.
The misstep comes on the same day that a survey by Ipsos Mori showed public support for Johnson at its lowest level since 2019. Labour are neck-and-neck with the Tories in most polls, but the party needs a sizable national lead to hold a realistic chance of victory due to Britain’s constituency-based system.
(Corrects name of trade minister in fourth paragraph)
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