Lammy made deputy PM with Cooper as foreign secretary and Mahmood at Home Office – as it happened | Politics
- Politics
- September 6, 2025
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- 109
Here is the full list of the new-look cabinet.
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David Lammy will be justice secretary and deputy prime minister
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Yvette Cooper will be foreign secretary
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Shabana Mahmood will be home secretary
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Darren Jones will be chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and retains his new role as chief secretary to the prime minister
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Steve Reed will be housing secretary
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Peter Kyle will be business secretary
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Liz Kendall will be science secretary
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Emma Reynolds will be environment secretary
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Douglas Alexander will be Scotland secretary
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Jonathan Reynolds will be chief whip
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Alan Campbell will be leader of the House of Commons.
Key events
A summary of today’s developments
Nigel Farage has said there is every chance of a general election in 2027 and declared at Reform’s conference in Birmingham that he will run on a pledge to ‘stop the boats’ within two weeks of entering No 10.
Pippa Crerar
Keir Starmer is battling to get a grip on the crisis that has engulfed his government with his deputy prime minister Angela Rayner forced to step down after breaching the ministerial code over her tax arrangements.
The prime minister brought forward a major cabinet reshuffle in an attempt to restore order and get back on the front foot after a damaging few days with Yvette Cooper, David Lammy and Shabana Mahmood all moved to prominent new roles.
However, the fallout from the controversy over Rayner, who as housing secretary underpaid about £40,000 stamp duty on her seaside flat, is likely to further damage Labour’s already battered reputation, as it struggles to take on the challenge from Reform UK.
With Rayner standing down from all three of her roles – which also included deputy leader of the Labour party – Downing Street is now braced for a bruising internal party contest to replace her, which frustrated MPs could use to try to force Starmer into a change of direction.
It comes just days after Downing Street attempted a reset after a difficult summer recess, during which Nigel Farage and migration policy dominated the headlines, and ahead of a tough autumn during which Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is expected to raise taxes to balance the nation’s books.
In his ruling, ethics watchdog Sir Laurie Magnus found that Rayner had “acted with integrity and with a dedicated and exemplary commitment to public service” but concluded she had breached the ministerial code over her tax affairs.
In her resignation letter, Rayner said that she “deeply regrets” her decision not to seek additional specialist tax advice over her purchase of the property in Hove, East Sussex, earlier this year.
Haroon Siddique
Defend Our Juries, which has organised protests to oppose the ban on Palestine Action, proscribed by Yvette Cooper under the Terrorism Act in July, has said that her departure as home secretary should also herald an end to the ban. A spokesperson said:
“Yvette Cooper being removed as home secretary is no surprise given the huge political error she made by proscribing Palestine Action, attracting condemnation and ridicule from across the political spectrum here and around the world and making the UK an international embarrassment.
“Due to her disastrous decision, over 720 people have been arrested under the Terrorism Act for holding cardboard signs – an utterly absurd and unjustifiable waste of resources. This never before attack on free speech in our country’s history, which borrows from the playbook of some of the world’s most repressive regimes, will see her go down as one of the UK’s worst home secretaries.
“Over 1,000 people have pledged to defy the ban in Parliament Square again tomorrow, as well as others across the UK. If the police arrest them all, there will be four times more counter terrorism arrests in one day, than there was in the whole of last year. This is how dictatorships behave – not democracies.
“Yvette Cooper’s ban on Palestine Action has spectacularly backfired for her and the government. Now, she’s been removed as home secretary, the proscription of Palestine Action must go with her.”
James Cleverly, shadow secretary for housing, communities and local government, wrote on X: “So many sideways moves in this reshuffle.
“Starmer can’t claim it’s about promoting new talent, or about removing deadwood.
“So it can only be that he put people into the wrong jobs last year.”
Following the appointment of Yvette Cooper as the new foreign secretary, the Commonwealth Pharmacists Association said: “As an organisation that has pioneered the delivery of high impact, low cost, sustainable global health development schemes in Africa and Asia with the generous support of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office over the last half decade, CPA asks the new secretary of state to meet with organisations like ours to explore new models of delivering international aid programmes at a time of financial pressure.
“Programmes which invest in enhancing workforce capability, developing the skills and expertise of professionals, and improving access to vital healthcare resources like preventative medicines can have an outsized impact on global health outcomes for a much lower cost than ‘traditional’ aid programmes. CPA is a leader in delivering high-impact, innovative and cost effective work in this space.
“We urge the new foreign secretary to engage with key stakeholders to explore how the UK’s official development assistant schemes can continue to save lives – directly around the world and indirectly in the UK through mitigation of infectious diseases and epidemics that respect no national border – despite the fiscal challenges the government faces.”
Richard Adams
The reshuffle’s decision to move the skills ministerial brief from the Department for Education and hand it to Pat McFadden at the Department for Work and Pensions has caused some head-scratching in the education sector as we await further details about who is doing what.
Previously, Jacqui Smith was the skills minister at the DfE, which under Labour included universities and higher education in England as well as further education and apprenticeships.
But the announcement that McFadden will now take skills raises various possibilities that need clarification. The DfE is likely to want to keep higher education, and offload apprenticeships and lifelong learning. But that raises the prospect of 16-19 education and FE colleges being administered by the DWP. To complicate matters, a skills white paper is on the way although that is likely to be pushed back.
Newsportual Centre for Universities and Business said: “Early clarity on how skills policy will be coordinated across departments and aligned with employers’ needs will be critical. Universities and businesses together are central to equipping people with the skills for the future economy.”
The Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, said: “I want thank my friend Ian Murray for his service as Secretary of State for Scotland.
“Ian held our party together during the most difficult and dark times.
“I want to congratulate Douglas Alexander on his appointment as the new secretary of state for Scotland.
“I know Douglas will use his experience, knowledge and skills to demonstrate that a UK Labour government is delivering for Scotland.
“I look forward to campaigning with Ian and Douglas to end the managed decline of Scotland under the SNP and chart a new direction for Scotland.”
Alexander said: “A UK Labour government has already shown what change looks like: ending Tory austerity, giving 200,000 of Scotland’s lowest-paid workers a pay rise, championing Scotland’s business with world beating trade deals and delivering the largest budget settlement in the history of devolution.
“But the SNP continue to squander that investment – and we must end two decades of SNP incompetence next year.
“So I look forward to working with Anas Sarwar to earn the trust of the people of Scotland and electing a Scottish Labour government that delivers the new direction Scotland needs.”
Ben Quinn
Wrapped in a union flag and clad head to foot in red, white and blue as she took in the full spectacle of Reform UK’s conference, Kim Anderson was enjoying meeting like-minded Nigel Farage supporters in the flesh.
“If you were to ask me if politics is a big part of my life, I would say it is and it isn’t, but I can spend all day commenting on the GB News website. You find that if you say things in a certain way then you can say anything you like,” said Anderson, a retired former ambulance worker and one-time Labour voter who had enthusiastically now thrown her lot in with Reform.
In Hethersett, near Norwich, where she lives, Anderson spoke of having to be cautious about expressing her views, adding: “You can normally judge what people are going to say, but you do have to watch what you say, you can find yourself shut down or they walk away.”
Following Yvette Cooper’s appointment as the new foreign secretary, Care International UK’s chief executive, Helen McEachern: said: “Her appointment comes at a moment of deep global crises for women and girls as attacks on their rights increase and intensify.
“We look forward to working with the secretary of state to challenge this rollback, and urge her to make choices that protect aid funding for women and girls and ensure the UK is a strong advocate for global gender equality.”
Pippa Crerar
At 9.30am on Monday morning, as MPs made their way back to Westminster, Keir Starmer gathered the entire staff of No 10 in the Pillared Room of Downing Street to tell them they were about to enter the next, delivery, stage of government.
“We go into phase two in good spirits, confident and with conviction,” he told them, as some of those gathered shuffled awkwardly. His remarks, after all, followed a difficult summer during which Labour vacated the pitch to Reform UK and ahead of what is likely to be an even more turbulent autumn.
With Starmer desperately needing to show he could get a grip on government, the rest of his big reset week could not have gone more badly. The departure of his deputy, Angela Rayner, is the most serious blow yet for the already beleaguered prime minister.
In interviews, Rayner often described Starmer as “the yin to my yang”, explaining how the odd couple of British politics may not have run on a joint ticket for leader and deputy, but they were so complementary they might as well have done.
She was everything that Starmer is not. Politically intuitive. A powerful communicator. An authentic working-class voice. Savage Reform attack dog. Popular with MPs, members and unions. Party fixer. Despite a sometimes bumpy relationship, Rayner’s absence will be keenly felt.”
Ben Quinn
The far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson has been disparaged for his comments on “rape gangs” but has been proven to be correct, Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf told the party’s annual conference.
Yusuf, who was named as by Nigel Farage on Friday as the party’s new head of policy, was in discussion with the former Tory minister and current editor of the Spectator Michael Gove at a fringe event when he made the comments.
During a question-and-answer session Yusuf appeared to refer to the track record of Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, when it came to the issue of grooming gangs in some parts of Britain.
“Tommy Robinson has said things about the rape gangs for years, and was making those arguments for years, and was disparaged, and has been proven to be correct on those matters, and deserves some credit for that,” said Yusuf.
Asked by Gove if Robinson could ever join Reform, Yusuf replied: “No.”
Yusuf was also asked by Gove, who was worse, Robinson or the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Yusuf replied: “Absolutely the worst is Jeremy Corbyn.”
Reform UK has previously faced a schism over its approach to Robinson’s supporters, after two high-profile party figures said in the past it was wrong to disavow those who went to a weekend rally backing the far-right figure.
Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, said last year that the party “want nothing to do with” Robinson and “all of that lot”. Farage also said after the summer riots that he had never had anything to do with “the Tommy Robinsons and those who genuinely do stir up hatred”.
But two high-profile 2024 candidates, Howard Cox and Ben Habib, took a different position, saying those who attended a major rally organised by Robinson were some of Reform’s own people. Both Cox and Habib later quit the party.
Commenting on the appointment of David Lammy as justice secretary, Katie Kempen, chief executive of Victim Support, said: “We would like to congratulate David Lammy on his appointment as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. He takes on this role at a critical moment for victims, who are navigating a broken justice system at a time when vital support services face devastating funding cuts.
“We look forward to working with him to build a justice system that truly delivers for victims, and to seize this opportunity to commit to long-term, sustainable funding for services, so that every victim receives the support and respect they need and deserve.”
Reacting to Shabana Mahmood’s appointment as home secretary, Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon said Mahmood still faces significant challenges despite “important progress” made by her predecessor Yvette Cooper.
Solomon said: “It is vital she quickly gets to grips with a long to-do list that includes rapidly ending the use of asylum hotels, speeding up decision making for asylum applications and expanding safe and legal pathways for refugees fleeing conflict to reach the UK safely.”
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