LONDON — Opposition leader Keir Starmer has quit the unity act — and it’s his left-wing colleagues in the line of fire.

The Labour Party chief sent the soft-left wing of his party into full retreat on Monday with a dramatic shadow Cabinet reshuffle that rewarded a string of MPs on his party’s right flank. 

It marked the final stage of a three-year project which has seen Starmer take ruthless grip of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing party and drag it steadily back to the center ground, echoing the 1990s modernization led by Tony Blair and pal Peter Mandelson.

“This is the Blairite and the Mandelson set,” said one ex-shadow minister from the Corbyn era who, like the others quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak frankly about party leadership. “They are now driving this project. There is no ambiguity now.”

With Labour commanding an 18-point poll lead over the ruling Conservatives ahead of next year’s general election, Starmer’s picks for his top team are a clear indication of who will hold high office if he wins power.

Lisa Nandy, Starmer’s soft-left rival for the leadership in 2020, was demoted from the prominent role of shadow housing and leveling up secretary to shadow international development minister. Also demoted were her soft-left friends and colleagues Jonathan Ashworth and Nick Thomas-Symonds. Two others, Rosena Allin-Khan and Jim McMahon also left the shadow cabinet.

By contrast Pat McFadden, Liz Kendall and Peter Kyle — three high-profile MPs on the right who worked as government aides during the Blair era — were given big promotions. Darren Jones, who is on the same wing of the party, and Hilary Benn, a Cabinet minister under Blair, were also appointed to Starmer’s top team. 

One shadow minister said there was “definitely a rightward shift to this reshuffle” and added: “The grown-ups are back in charge.”

But a senior Labour official insisted the promotions were purely about competency, not politics. “The new shadow Cabinet is all about winning — and then governing,” they said. “We need to kick this dreadful government out and then we need to show that we can give Britain its future back. That means hitting the ground running.”

Final settlement

Only one left-wing figure emerged from the Labour reshuffle wearing a smile.

Labour’s elected deputy leader, Angela Rayner, was promoted to shadow deputy prime minister and handed Nandy’s old domestic policy brief covering housing and the regions, meaning she will shadow veteran Brexiteer Michael Gove. 

John McTernan, Blair’s former political secretary — now a senior adviser at BCW — said this represented Starmer’s “final settlement” with the soft-left, also pointing out former party leader Ed Miliband had been kept in post.

“Yes, you can say Pat [McFadden]’s a Blairite, [Liz Kendall] is Blairite, but they are also Starmerites in that they are part of a constellation of figures that Keir has chosen to put around him,” McTernan said.

Ayesha Hazarika, a former adviser to Miliband, said “there’s no doubt Starmer has moved over to the more Blairite side of things — but a lot of that is about wanting to be ruthlessly pragmatic to win, which Blair was very good at.”

“It is not Blairites versus Corbynites anymore, it is more the dominance of Starmer right now. He’s riding high in the polls. Everybody is shit scared of him, basically. Everyone in the party is genuinely frightened to say anything,” she added.

A shadow Cabinet minister agreed: “Keir is very, very strong and the reshuffle reflects that.” A former Labour aide said his decisions were “brutal but necessary.”

Insiders say that one of the most significant appointments has been McFadden’s. He has been put in charge of coordinating Labour’s election effort, alongside campaign manager Morgan McSweeney. A Labour insider said McFadden and McSweeney would work together as a “double act.”

Sea change

Starmer took over the Labour Party at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 after a brutal election defeat under Corbyn’s left-wing leadership.

Starmer won the contest off the back of a slate of left-wing pledges — including to bring a raft of public services into public ownership — as he sought to court members who had previously embraced Corbyn’s radical-left agenda.

But in his three years in charge, Stamer has gradually shed many of those pledges.

One former Labour Party adviser thinks his current team would not be unhappy with the conclusion being drawn that the right of the party are increasingly in charge, and that the soft left are in retreat. Indeed, Starmer even appeared on stage for a one-to-one appearance with Blair this summer — the first Labour leader to do so since Blair left office in 2007.

In quotes issued by his office following his reshuffle Monday, Starmer leant into the ‘change’ narrative around his three-year leadership.

“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,” he said.  

“It will rub salt in the wound for some of the soft left,” said the former shadow minister from the Corbyn era, quoted above. “Starmer was going to be ‘Corbyn in a suit’, soft left and sensible. He is now firmly in the camp of Mandleson and Blair.”