How Starmer could reshuffle top team – as Labour forces vote on faulty schools

Good morning, and welcome back to LabourList‘s morning email. With MPs sitting again after the summer break, normal service resumes: we’ll be back in your inboxes every weekday morning, picking apart all the goings on in Labour-world.

We’re not easing back into things gently: today is widely reckoned to be the day of the long-awaited shadow cabinet reshuffle. It’s also Sue Gray’s first day as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. Speculation as to how the Labour leader will shake up his top team (probably for the last time before next year’s general election) has been rife. While most of the big names are generally considered to be safe (it would be a big surprise to see Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper or David Lammy moved from their briefs, and those leading ‘missions’ are also likely to be staying put), insiders reckon it is all about Angela Rayner.

Given that she has her own mandate as Labour’s elected deputy leader, she has a degree of agency when it comes to her roles that other shadow cabinet members lack (who remembers the 2021 reshuffle, where an attempt to move her led to a “prolonged standoff“?). Rumours have been swirling for months that Rayner will shed her Cabinet Office role and replace Lisa Nandy as Shadow Levelling Up Secretary. What this means for Nandy –  Starmer’s defeated leadership rival, and the shadow cabinet’s most senior BME woman, who is seen as a standard bearer for the soft left – remains to be seen.

Darren Jones, business and trade select committee chair (Reeves’ old gig) is often pegged for promotion (he’ll have his hands full if so: his family has just welcomed a baby daughter), as is newly reselected shadow employment minister Alison McGovern. In the shadow cabinet, Jim McMahon, Jo Stevens and Rosena Allin-Khan are among the names to have been floated for moves by some, sideways or otherwise.

There is “just the flicker of a suggestion” too that Starmer might be a “bit more brutal” in the middle and lower rungs of the shadow front bench, according to the BBC’s Henry Zeffman. The Beeb has a good primer here, but as LabourList is the BBC of the Labour Party, keep an eye on our site throughout the day or perhaps week for updates. We’ll be running a liveblog if and when things get underway, assuming no delays, and a full list of who’s in and out.

The reshuffle is unquestionably the biggest story in Labour world this morning, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only one. Parliament is back, and in the Commons this week – on Wednesday, to be precise – Labour will force a vote to reveal information about just how much potentially dangerous concrete – known as RAAC– is in the country’s schools, and which are affected. Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said parents have the “right to know”, and an “urgent, full audit” is needed. Her shadow cabinet colleague Thangam Debbonaire faced a grilling on Radio 4 this morning about whether Labour would cough up to tackle the issue, however.

Keir Starmer told the Mirror over the weekend that Labour will not raise income tax in government. The announcement is not entirely new though, nor surprising given the commitments not to raise taxes – wealth or otherwise – that have come from the Shadow Chancellor in recent weeks. Labour’s tax pledges received an endorsement from an unexpected quarter over recess, namely Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who praised Reeves’ fiscal probity.

Also over the weekend, the Times carried an intriguing report claiming Starmer could be getting ready to purge up to a dozen “troublesome MPs” before the next election, though it has no official comment from the party. With Labour now setting a high bar for candidates, it has been pointed out some serving MPs’ conduct means they may well have not been picked if they were running for the first time.