Keir Starmer appointed Anneliese Dodds to the key role of shadow chancellor on Sunday as the newly elected Labour leader sacked several prominent allies of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn and started to build a team in his own image.
Ms Dodds, a former MEP and academic who entered parliament only in 2017, is among half a dozen new appointments to top jobs drawn from the “soft left” of the party.
Lisa Nandy, who came third in the leadership race, is the new shadow foreign secretary, while Welsh solicitor Nick Thomas-Symonds is the new shadow home secretary.
Some of these figures are largely unknown to the general public but are seen as acceptable by the two rival wings of the party — the “rightwing” Blairites and the leftwing Corbynistas. Mr Thomas-Symonds and Ms Dodds have largely stayed out of the factional civil war inside Labour in recent years.
Sir Keir, a former human rights lawyer, won a landslide victory on Saturday in Labour’s leadership race, having pitched himself as the figure who could heal the party’s divisions after four demoralising election defeats.
His only controversial hire on Sunday was that of Rachel Reeves as shadow Cabinet Office secretary, opposite Michael Gove. Ms Reeves, chair of the business select committee, is a former Bank of England official who angered some “hard-left” members by refusing to serve under Mr Corbyn.
Meanwhile Sir Keir sacked several loyal supporters of Mr Corbyn, including Barry Gardiner as shadow trade secretary and Ian Lavery as party chairman. He kept Nick Brown in the role of chief whip.
With his hands-down victory in the first round of the contest, the new leader had a free hand to build a new team from scratch.
He is also expected to place many of his own people in senior roles in the party’s Victoria Street headquarters in the coming weeks.
Giving his victory speech by video on Saturday morning, Sir Keir admitted that the party had a “mountain to climb” to get back into power. In December’s general election Labour lost 59 seats, holding on to just 202 — which means it would need to seize more than 120 seats at the next election to win a majority.
But anyone expecting a sudden lurch to the more centrist days of former leader Tony Blair could be left disappointed. Sir Keir is acutely aware that most of grassroots supporters only joined the party because of Mr Corbyn — and have deeply-held socialist and environmental views.
During the leadership race he said he would retain policies from both the 2017 and 2019 manifestos. He endorsed renationalising some industries including rail, mail and water and backed higher taxes on the wealthy and big business, as well as a so-called Green Industrial Revolution.
Those comments will not be forgotten by Momentum, the pro-Corbyn support group, which issued a reminder to the new leader at the weekend: “We’ll hold Keir to account and make sure he keeps his promises.”
Sir Keir, who as shadow Brexit secretary shifted Labour towards backing a second Brexit referendum, has not ruled out rejoining the EU. His pro-EU rhetoric has made him popular with Labour’s Remain-leaning members but may not go down well with voters in constituencies lost by the party in December — most of which voted Leave.
Sir Keir’s need to balance these conflicting forces was evident in his words on Saturday. The new leader paid tribute to his “friend” Mr Corbyn for energising the Labour movement and leading the party through difficult times — and said he would listen to all wings of the party.
But he said Labour was “failing in our historic purpose” after losing four elections in a row. “Be in no doubt I understand the scale of the task, the gravity of the position that we’re in.”
He also said anti-Semitism had been a “stain on our party” which had brought grief to many Jewish communities. “On behalf of the Labour Party, I am sorry. And I will tear out this poison by its roots and judge success by the return of Jewish members.”
The new leader faces a long road ahead, as the next general election is unlikely before 2024.
He also surveys a political landscape which has been rendered utterly unfamiliar by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Conservative government has pledged more than £60bn to prop up struggling companies and underwrite the wages of millions of workers, while partially nationalising the rail and bus industries — measures that pose a challenge to any politician seeking to outmanoeuvre the Conservative government from the left.
On Sunday Sir Keir dismissed the idea that recent government interventions had vindicated Mr Corbyn’s philosophy. But he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that the state would need to be “reimagined” after the crisis: “I think it is inevitable that we have to ask those that have more to pay more . . . when we are through there is going to have to be a reckoning.”
Sir Keir’s challenge will be holding the government to account during the biggest crisis for decades while rebuilding Labour’s credibility as a party of government.
On Sunday he attended a virtual briefing with senior Whitehall figures and said he would not “demand the impossible” or do opposition for the sake of opposition.
“Getting the balance right is important here. We have to be supportive, constructive, support the government where we should do so,” he said. “The Labour party under my leadership will ask difficult questions but only for the purpose of pointing out mistakes so they can be put right.”
