Angela Rayner is about for a comeback – and Chancellor Rachel Reeves may face the sack.
Angela Rayner may make a comeback in Keir Starmer’s reshuffle (Picture: Getty)
Keir Starmer is planning a lurch to the left in a last-ditch Cupboard reshuffle to avoid wasting his premiership. It will imply bringing former Deputy Chief Angela Rayner and former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh again into his high crew, after each have been beforehand pressured to resign from the Cupboard.
Sir Keir can be contemplating sacking Well being Secretary Wes Streeting, who’s on the proper of the celebration. Mr Streeting has been the topic of claims that he’s plotting to exchange the Prime Minister, which he vehemently denies. There may very well be a return for Lucy Powell, the previous Chief of the Commons, who was sacked by Sir Keir in September 2025 however went on to be elected Labour’s new deputy chief, suggesting she has the assist of many celebration activists. She is on the smooth left of the celebration and near Andy Burnham, the Larger Manchester Mayor, seen as a possible management contender.
Essentially the most troublesome resolution going through the Prime Minister is whether or not to sack his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. Sir Keir mentioned final yr she would preserve her job “into the following election and for a few years after”, after she was seen crying throughout Prime Minister’s Questions. However he’s now contemplating changing her to sign that the Authorities is making a recent begin.
One insider mentioned, in accordance with studies: “A shift to the left means a change in financial coverage, which suggests a brand new chancellor.”
Ms Reeves may very well be changed by Treasury minister Torsten Bell, a former assume tank head, or Darren Jones, an in depth ally of the Prime Minister.
Ms Rayner, who served within the Shadow Cupboard when Labour was led by Jeremy Corbyn, was one of many leaders of a profitable marketing campaign to strain the Authorities into axing the two-child profit cap, one thing Sir Keir and Ms Reeves beforehand resisted. She resigned from the entrance bench final yr after it emerged she underpaid tax on an 800,000 flat in Hove, however hopes the tax workplace can have resolved the problem earlier than Could’s native elections, making a return to the entrance line of politics doable.
In an explosive speech final week, she warned: “The very survival of the Labour Occasion is at stake – as a celebration and a motion we can not conceal, we can not undergo the motions within the face of decline. We’re working out of time.”
It was seen as a name to arms for colleagues contemplating whether or not to oust Sir Keir if Labour suffers losses in Wales, Scotland and English native councils on Could 7.
Unite normal secretary Sharon Graham made the risk specific final week, saying: “I believe after the Could elections there might be a transfer to vary chief, as a result of I believe Labour are going to just about be decimated in these elections.”
Nevertheless, Sir Keir may stop Ms Rayner from transferring in opposition to him by bringing her again into the Authorities fold – if she accepts a job.
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Ms Haigh left the Authorities in 2024 after it emerged that she had pleaded responsible to fraud by false illustration in 2014, following a 2013 police report that her work cellphone had been stolen.
She has since turn into a number one member of the Tribune Group of Labour MPs, which is pushing the Authorities to maneuver to the left on the financial system, together with by pushing up the minimal wage additional.
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