Starmer’s attention-grabbing shadow cabinet reshuffle

Keir Starmer has a new front bench. He has conducted his second reshuffle in the space of a year, but this time he’s actually managed to get the changes he was after. 

A key theme of this reshuffle has been giving Labour a better chance of being heard. Many of the departures today have involved figures who were underperforming in key roles: Nick Thomas-Symonds, for instance, was very well-liked in the party but struggling to get much purchase even against Priti Patel’s growing political mess on human trafficking in the Channel. He has now been replaced by Yvette Cooper, who has done this brief before and who has grown even more in stature as chair of the Home Affairs Committee. It’s a mark of how much more prestigious select committees have become that it wasn’t a given Cooper would say yes when Starmer asked her.

David Lammy takes over as shadow foreign secretary, which is a bold move.