More than 24 hours after he started trying to reshuffle his shadow cabinet, Sir Keir Starmer has finally got what he wanted. He has moved his shadow chancellor, sacked Nick Brown as chief whip and moved Angela Rayner. Yesterday he told the party’s deputy leader that he didn’t want her to be party chair or campaign coordinator, and instead that she should move to shadow cabinet. After hours of negotiations, Rayner is now confirmed as – deep breath – Deputy Leader, Shadow First Secretary of State, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Shadow Secretary of State for the Future of Work.
As I reported earlier, Rayner had been pushing for some aides to be sacked from Starmer’s team. Her view was that they were responsible for some of the unpleasant briefing against her involving first class train tickets and claims she hadn’t been able to give a coherent run-down of the party’s campaign message when asked.
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