Explore the twists and turns in Starmer’s cabinet

Amidst many predictable faces, Keir Starmer’s first week in office has seen a slew of surprise ministerial appointments, with knighthoods being handed out to non-parliamentarians who have taken up public office.

The new prime minister’s allies have called it a “many-talents government”, a technocratic priority of competence over loyalty (bad luck, Emily Thornberry). Others have suggested it was political calculation, a strategy to “take the air out of the (left) balloon”, as the Sunday Times put it, with a few select progressive appointments.

Will they deliver, or will they simply be the liberal faces of very bad policies? Here’s a guide to some of Starmer’s more surprising appointments.

Richard Hermer KC – Attorney General.

Labour lost five seats to pro-Palestinian candidates, with Jess Phillips and Wes Streeting avoiding a similar fate by several hundred votes each.

This may explain why Starmer chose Richard Hermer KC as Attorney General over Emily Thornberry, even though only one of them was an elected MP.

Hermer is a Jewish lawyer who has spoken out against Israeli war crimes. He advised Labour last year when the Conservative government tried to ban the boycott of Israeli goods, saying the legislation could breach international law. This led to an attack in the right-wing community newspaper the Jewish Chronicle, which reported on Hermer’s “pro-Palestinian activist past”. Eighteen senior Jewish lawyers, including a former JC chairman, subsequently criticised the JC’s “dangerous and stupid” attack on their colleague.

Columnist Danny Finkelstein wrote – for the Jewish Chronicle, no less – that Hermer’s nomination means that Zionists will have to engage in a “nuanced public debate” in which they accept that “the government will criticize Israel, and even act against it, without opposing its existence.” Not everyone is so sanguine. Speaking to All Israel News, Jonathan Turner KC, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, said: “I approach his nomination with great trepidation.”

Hermer’s legal practice has often involved holding corporations to account: for example, representing claims arising from oil spills in Nigeria. He represented over 900 victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster.

Whether the government will change its stance on arms sales to Israel – worth at least £488m since 2015 – remains to be seen. That depends in part on Foreign Secretary David Lammy. When he was in opposition, he pressed his predecessor David Cameron to publish FCO guidance on the legality of continuing arms sales, citing “risks to the credibility of the UK’s export controls system”. Cameron refused. Now that Lammy is in power, will he live up to the lofty principles he upheld when acting on them was someone else’s problem?

The resurrected Blairites.

Alan Milburn was health secretary under Tony Blair and is a proponent of using the private sector to provide NHS services. He returned to the rank and file in 2003 to spend more time with his family, but also found time to take on a £30,000 consulting assignment at Bridgepoint Capital, which funds private healthcare companies that enter the NHS. He was also chairman of the board of healthcare industry watchdog PricewaterhouseCoopers. In 2021, he encouraged Boris Johnson to link increased spending on the NHS to “reform”, widely understood as synonymous with privatisation.

Now Starmer’s government is trying to come up with a role for him – which the Telegraph reports has yet to be decided – to help Wes Streeting with his own NHS “reforms”.

Jacqui Smith, who became the first female Home Secretary under Gordon Brown, is back, this time as Education Secretary. She seems to epitomise the technocratic, managerial approach: she was embarrassed by the expenses scandal and had to become a Lord to join the government, but she also has some experience of the job, having previously been Education Secretary and a teacher.

Douglas Alexander, another veteran of Blairites, is Trade Secretary, while Pat McFadden, described by Peter Mandelson as a “pure New Labour figure”, has been appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

James Timpson – Prisons Minister.

The prison system is so broken that it will soon no longer be safe to take in new prisoners, grinding the criminal justice system to a halt. Conservatives have repeatedly ignored warnings about this, according to Tom Wheatley, president of the Prison Governors Association, making it “inevitable that someone else will have to make very difficult decisions.”

Rise, James Timpson, new Minister of Prisons.

In February, he told Channel 4 News that the UK should follow the example of the Netherlands: “They’ve closed half their prisons not because people in the Netherlands are less naughty. It’s because they have a different way of sentencing, which is community sentencing, so people can stay at home, keep their jobs, keep their homes, read bedtime stories to their children, and that means they’re much less likely to re-offend,” he said.

Timpson is a millionaire owner of Timpsons, the key-cutting chain you might see in the car park of your nearest Sainsbury’s. Timpson makes it a point to employ ex-convicts to help them avoid reoffending. He believes they make excellent employees because they don’t want to let their families down again. Timpsons employees have access to a range of benefits, including company holiday homes and pet bereavement days.

The Daily Mail will be furious to see this guy trying to improve the criminal justice system even a little.

Matthew Pennycook – Minister for Housing.

The appointment of Matthew Pennycook as Housing Minister is causing concern among property owners.

Before the election put an end to this, Pennycock tabled an amendment to the Tenants’ Reform Bill that would have prevented landlords from selling properties for two years after the start of a tenancy, and shaped Labor’s policy of ending “bidding wars” between tenants.

When the bill was defeated in the run-up to the election, Pennycook accused the Tories of protecting vested interests and promised to scrap section 21 or evictions “no fault”. Given the Tories’ slowness on section 21, it will be interesting to see if Pennycook steps up.

He also said that increasing housing stock was “not a panacea” and was lukewarm about giving developers carte blanche. He has previously opposed high-rise developments in his Greenwich and Woolwich constituency – and has been accused of NIMBYism.

It will be interesting to see what impact he has on Labour’s plans to overhaul the planning system. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said the state will not build council housing, leaving that to the private sector. Whether Pennycook is as “pro-renter” in government as the hysterical landlord lobby imagines remains to be seen.

And the one who got away.

Starmer replaced the Tories’ “Stop the Boats” with his own, only slightly less inhumane “Smash the Gangs” (previous attempts to target smuggling gangs had forced migrants to make even more dangerous crossings). As part of this, Yvette Cooper announced a new political stunt, the Border Security Command.

Neil Basu – the first Asian to lead Britain’s counter-terrorism police – has accused the previous government of intervening to prevent him from gaining influential positions because of his diversity speeches. The former policeman said he was proud to be “woke”; accused the Metropolitan Police of institutional racism; said BLM protesters “have a right to be angry”; and compared the Tories’ rhetoric on migrants to Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech. But his views have clearly caught Starmer’s attention.

Basu was supposed to be appointed commander of the new Border Security Command, but apparently turned it down. Awkwardly.