Who could be in Keir Starmer’s new Labour Cabinet – from firebrand Angela Rayner to secret ‘Tory assassin’
SIR Keir Starmer is set to name his first Cabinet after sweeping into No.10 with an historic majority.
The newly-appointed PM faces the huge task of assigning his closest allies to Government positions today only hours after Rishi Sunak left Downing Street for the final time.
The top table group is set to include Sir Keir’s firebrand deputy Angela Rayner, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves and potential future PM Wes Streeting.
But Sir Keir could also opt to immediately shuffle his pack, bringing in experienced players who have returned to the House of Commons, like ex-Gordon Brown minister Douglas Alexander.
Here, we look at the names Sir Keir could appoint to his first Cabinet.
Angela Rayner
Deputy Leader, Shadow Deputy Prime Minister and Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
Labour’s firebrand deputy leader is known for her tough talk and left-wing politics.
She grew up on a Stockport council estate in abject poverty – once recalling how her mum fed her dog food because she could not read the label on the tin.
Angela – or Angie as she is known by her friends – left school without any qualifications and was pregnant at 16.
After her son Ryan was born she started work as a carer, then becoming a trade union rep for Unison before becoming an MP for Ashton-under-Lyne in 2015.
Angie, 44, has used her powerful role as Labour deputy to push for a huge increase in trade union power.
Dubbed ‘the Queen’ by some fellow MPs, Ms Rayner’s no-nonsense approach has won her many fans – including Sir Keir Starmer’s powerful chief of staff Sue Gray.
But she is a possible rival to Sir Keir in the long term and many in Labour predict she will cause trouble for her boss.
Earlier this year Ms Rayner faced a police probe into the sale of her old house in Stockport.
She faced questions over whether she had paid enough council tax on the sale.
But Greater Manchester Police found Ms Rayner had no case to answer.
Rachel Reeves
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
Once cruelly dubbed “boring snoring” by a TV exec, Rachel Reeves has spent the past 18 months carefully reinventing herself as the new, non-nonsense ‘Iron Chancellor’ in waiting.
It is a deliberate nod to Margaret Thatcher and designed to show Brits that she can be trusted with their hard-earned cash and is a tough woman not to be messed with.
In some ways Rachel’s rise seems written in the stars. She was a schoolgirl chess champion, studied PPE at Oxford and worked at the Bank of England.
Then came politics. And after getting elected as Leeds West MP in 2010, Rachel quickly became a rising star of Ed Miliband’s frontbench – although she refused to serve in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.
Her career really took off when Sir Keir Starmer promoted her to shadow chancellor in his first big reshuffle in 2021.
Since then the pair have been joined at the hip – they are probably the closest No10 and No11 pairing since David Cameron and George Osborne.
A tough cookie, she was key in scrapping Labour’s £28 billion a year green eco pledge – much to the fury of Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner.
If Labour win she will become Britain’s first ever female Chancellor. Quite the achievement. As Rachel’s favourite singer Beyonce once sang: Who run the world? Girls!
Yvette Cooper
Shadow Secretary of State for the Home Department
Married to Ed Balls, Yvette is one-half of one of New Labour‘s star power couples.
She was born to a trade union boss and a maths teacher and flew academically – studying at Oxford, Harvard and the LSE.
Yvette, 55, started out in politics in the early 1990s, working as a researcher for then Labour leader John Smith before jetting stateside to help Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992.
Elected as the MP for Pontefract and Castleford in Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide victory, she has landed a string of frontbench jobs.
But she refused to serve under Jeremy Corbyn, instead becoming boss of the powerful Home Affairs select Committee.
Yvette, was nicknamed the ‘Tory assassin’ after her forensic cross examination led to Amber Rudd to quit as Home Sec.
The mother-of-three’s first job was on a farm picking strawberries and driving a tractor.
Her attention to detail makes Yvette a formidable opponent.
But she has failed to ditch the jargon and doublespeak which characterised the New Labour years – which could unstick her.
Wes Streeting
Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
A Blairite tipped as a future Labour leader and Prime Minister, Mr Streeting’s background reads like a Danny Dyer script.
Wes, 41, was brought up on a council estate in London’s East End to a single mum who often had to pawn her jewellery to pay the bills.
His granddad Bill was a Royal Navy World War II veteran – but also a bank robber who hung out with the East End’s infamous Kray twins and spent his life in and out of jail.
His nan Libby ended up getting embroiled in Bill’s crimes and sharing a prison cell with Christine Keeler, the model at the heart of the Profumo Affair.
The Ilford South MP is a proud patriot who often talks of his love for King and country – values he got from his granddad Bill.
Wes has warned the NHS must “reform or die”. He has set himself the mammoth task of fixing it. It is a goal that could seal his political fate.
David Lammy
Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
Set to become Britain’s chief diplomat, Tottenham choirboy David Lammy is known as one of the most outspoken members of Keir’s shadow cabinet.
He was promoted in the Tony Blair years before backing Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership election – before U-turning and saying he regretted it.
He has strong transatlantic ties with the Democrats stemming from when he met Barack Obama while studying at Harvard University.
Not exactly known for his tact, he faces a frosty reception from presidential hopeful Donald Trump after previously describing him as a Nazi sympathiser.
The shadow foreign secretary has also expressed support for charging Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu with alleged war crimes.
In 2022 he was found to have breached the ministerial code after he failed to declare almost £40,000 worth of financial interests on time.
Bridget Phillipson
Shadow Secretary of State for Education
The daughter of a single mum, Bridget was brought up on a tough street in the former mining town of Washington in Sunderland.
She relied on benefits and free school meals growing up, and was a painfully shy child.
But her mum was a powerful force of nature, a Labour activist who ran a women’s refuge.
She signed her daughter up for acting lessons after school and Bridget ended up becoming an extra on Byker Grove.
Bridget was just 26 when she won the seat of Houghton & Sunderland South making her one of Labour’s youngest MPs.
She loathed Jeremy Corbyn and was promoted by Sir Keir Starmer – first to Shadow Treasury Minister and then to Shadow Education Secretary.
The mother-of-two has been pushed hard by team Starmer, but remains an enigma and has not announced much policy apart from VAT on private schools.
Louise Haigh
Shadow Secretary of State for Transport
Louise Haigh is the self-dubbed ‘passenger-in-chief’ – or Transport Secretary in non-Labour speak.
With train cancellations, faulty lines, and never-ending strikes a constant blight on the UK network, the 26-year-old has said that she will get Britain moving again and fix our railways.
When she was elected as MP for Sheffield Heeley in the 2015 election she became the youngest Labour member of that parliament – aged just 27.
After her first year in Westminster she was declared the “most hard-working” new MP in a study of those elected in 2015.
Before she ran for public office she worked as public policy manager for insurance company Aviva.
She first joined the shadow cabinet in 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader and has previously been Shadow Minister for Civil Service and Digital Reform and Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
She nominated Corbyn as a candidate for the Labour leadership in 2015 then later said she regretted it.
Emily Thornberry
Shadow Attorney General
Like Keir, Emily Thornberry worked as a human rights lawyer before entering politics.
She has been MP for Islington South and Finsbury and has been Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales since 2021.
She has spoken about how her dad walked out on her family when she was seven, leaving her mum to raise three children on benefits.
They were too poor to afford to have their pets anymore – so her mum had the family cats put down.
In 2019 she accused a former Labour MP of “making up s***” about her after Caroline Flint claimed she had called Brexit voters “stupid”.
When she was shadow Defence Secretary in 2016 she asked what nuclear defence rating “Defcon One” meant in a private meeting.
Lisa Nandy
Shadow Cabinet Minister for International Development
Former Labour leader hopeful Lisa Nandy was demoted to the fringes of the shadow cabinet by Keir Starmer last year.
She was replaced by firebrand Angela Rayner as shadow Housing Secretary and is now shadow Minister for International Development.
Nandy, 44, came third in the Labour leadership election in 2020 behind Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey.
She has previously served as Shadow Foreign Secretary and Shadow Energy Secretary.
First elected as Wigan MP in 2010, her family has a long history in politics as her grandad was the leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords and her dad was a Marxist academic.
Nandy ran the student dating column at Newcastle University and as a teenager she was such a massive Take That fan that she camped outside Mark Owen’s house.