Why Keir Starmer made Shabana Mahmood the new home secretary
In the Labour Party’s rockiest week yet, it attempted to turn crisis into opportunity with a reshuffle. What are the key movements in the cabinet? And why does one move matter so much more than all the rest?
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In brief:
- Angela Rayner was forced to resign as Deputy Prime Minister after admitting to underpaying tax, leading to an impromptu cabinet reshuffle where David Lammy replaced her, Yvette Cooper moved to Foreign Secretary, and Shabana Mahmood became the new Home Secretary.
- The News Agents say the reshuffle was primarily about changing the Home Secretary, because Starmer's team felt Yvette Cooper wasn't strong enough on immigration issues, particularly with growing pressure from Reform UK and Nigel Farage over small boats and asylum policies.
- Shabana Mahmood was possibly a strategic choice for the new Home Secretary, The News Agents say, because, as a prominent Muslim woman, she can take a harder line on immigration without being accused of racism, allowing Labour to adopt tougher rhetoric to counter Reform UK.
What’s the story?
The Labour Party moved from announcing a ‘reset’ on Monday to a full-blown ‘reshuffle’ by Friday, after its rockiest week in government yet.
In the midst of the unravelling, Keir Starmer defended his Deputy Leader Angela Raynor after she admitted underpaying tax, but two days and one ethics review later she was forced to resign from the role - something that Emily Maitlis suspects Starmer may have preempted.
Moving Darren Jones - who Emily describes as Starmer’s “personal guide dog” - to the role of Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister two days before Rayner’s admission, was “the beginning of Starmer recognising that Angela Rayner might have to go,” she adds.
While no new figures were introduced in the reshuffle as cabinet ministers; some of the biggest names on Starmer’s front bench, including Yvette Cooper, Shabana Mahmood and Pat McFadden, did find themselves moving roles.
Most prominently, Starmer found a replacement for Rayner’s role as Deputy Prime Minister in David Lammy, also moving him from foreign secretary to justice secretary.
As David Lammy moves to the justice department, taking his place in the foreign office is Yvette Cooper, who now has the mammoth task of taking on relations with Donald Trump and two seemingly never-ending wars in Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine.
And completing the triangle, Shabana Mahmood moves from home secretary, to justice secretary.
“Morgan McSweeney and Keir Starmer have decided not to let a crisis go to waste and to try to convert it into an opportunity,” Lewis Goodall says.
“And that opportunity was clearly centered around the home office.”
The main reason the reshuffle took place
While there were several movements that took place within the cabinet, all the shuffling and machinations were really about one thing, Emily Maitlis says, changing the home secretary.
“We cannot underestimate how central the changing of the guard at the home office was to this whole arrangement,” she says.
The role is crucial, as the summer saw growing public unrest over small boats and asylum hotels, with Labour continuing to attempt to fend off Reform, who claim to have all the answers on immigration.
“There is no nice way of saying this: Keir Starmer and the team around him decided that Yvette Cooper wasn't up to the job,” Emily Maitlis says.
“He essentially wasn't hearing strong enough language, strong enough decision making, or even strong enough rhetoric for what he feels he needs now to fight off Farage.”
That task now falls to Shabana Mahmood, someone who is well thought of by No.10, and impressed with how she took on her previous role of justice secretary.
While admitting it’s “delicate”, Lewis says he thinks Starmer decided that as a prominent Muslim woman, Mahmood can get away with saying and doing things in the home office that Cooper and others could not
“She can turn to the liberal left and say: ‘Look, you can't say to me that I'm a racist. I am going to think the unthinkable on this, because we need to, in order to see off Farage’,” Lewis says.
“So it is a deeply, deeply political move at a moment of maximum vulnerability on this particular issue of small boats,” he adds.
And she’s already facing the task head on - suggesting she might suspend visas from countries that the UK doesn't have returns agreements with, and hopes of removing all asylum seekers from hotels and putting them into disused military barracks.
“You wonder if Starmer is coming at it thinking; ’Who could be my Suella?’” Emily says.
“Suella was deeply unpalatable to Labour when they were in opposition, but right now, they're probably looking for the person who is prepared to say ‘nothing's off the table. We'll do whatever we need to do’.”
What’s The News Agents’ take?
Lewis says that for all of Labour’s shouting about what a great job they were doing to bring immigration numbers down, the reshuffle is not a great look.
“It’s an uncomfortable position to be in, which is: ‘We've been doing a great job on small boats. The home secretary was doing a great job on small boats. Oh, and we just changed everybody who was responsible for it’.”
But with Farage piling on pressure, protests outside of asylum hotels and Reform UK rising in the polls, Labour clearly felt as though they had to do something drastic to show that they have a steer on the issue.
“I feel like there has been a shift,” Emily says.
“It’s this idea that they cannot now not make it their priority, whether in their hearts they truly believe it is or not. It's kind of been thrust upon them.”
Lewis agrees that bringing Mahmood in is a “soft reset” of small boats for the party, even if they are simply seen to be doing more by the public.
“I think there's a lot of frustration in No.10, that Cooper wasn't seen to be more on the front foot with these things, she wasn't out there doing media stuff, which we've already seen from Mahmood,” he says.
But, he adds, being seen to be doing something and actually doing something are two very different things - and new home secretary or not, this is not a problem that can’t be fixed overnight.
“The fact is, if there were a simple solution, it would have been done by now, either by Yvette cooper or by the litany of previous Conservative home secretaries.”