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Keir Starmer is clinging to a headline-friendly “first” after making the biggest shake-up of his Labour Cabinet since the 2024 general election.

For the first time, women occupy all three of the most senior cabinet roles.

Shabana Mahmood is the new Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper has been shunted across to the Foreign Office, and Rachel Reeves remains Chancellor of the Exchequer.

This is certainly a milestone in representation.

But is it really anything more?

The symbolism v the substance

Reeves’s record has already been widely dissected – and not in a flattering way. She has kept the economy on the tracks, perhaps, but she has not put it on better ones.

Cooper’s Home Office tenure was defined by an inability to deal with small-boat crossings. It is hard to see how that equips her for delicate international diplomacy.

Mahmood, meanwhile, comes trailing her own controversies. Only days before her promotion, she had unveiled sweeping changes to the justice system – including early release for thousands of prisoners to tackle overcrowding – and has been criticised for a heavy-handed approach. Now she has been thrown into one of the most toxic jobs in politics.

The wider reshuffle

Rayner’s resignation – after she admitted underpaying £40,000 in stamp duty on a Hove flat – left a gap as Deputy Prime Minister, Housing Secretary and Labour’s elected deputy leader. David Lammy stepped in as Deputy PM and has also been made Justice Secretary.

Considering his record of failure to hold Israel to account for its Gaza genocide, it seems hard to believe he’ll be able to improve the UK’s failing justice system.

That move set off a domino effect:

• Yvette Cooper: from Home Secretary to Foreign Secretary

• Shabana Mahmood: from Justice to the Home Office

• Rachel Reeves stays as Chancellor

• David Lammy: becomes Deputy PM and Justice Secretary

• Steve Reed moves from Environment to Housing

• Emma Reynolds: promoted to Environment

• Peter Kyle: from Science to Business

• Liz Kendall: from Work & Pensions to Science

• Pat McFadden: from the Cabinet Office to Work & Pensions (with a new Skills brief, creating a so-called “super-department”)

• Jonathan Reynolds: from Business to Chief Whip

• Alan Campbell: from Chief Whip to Leader of the House of Commons

• Darren Jones: becomes Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in addition to Chief Secretary to the PM

• Douglas Alexander: back in the Cabinet as Scotland Secretary

Out go Lucy Powell (Commons Leader) and Ian Murray (Scotland Secretary).

It is a wholesale clear-out, billed by Downing Street as “phase two” of the government – but it already looks like Starmer was panicked into going further than intended after losing Rayner.

The opposition lines

The Conservatives were quick to jeer, calling it “deckchairs on a sinking ship”.

Reform UK’s Nigel Farage declared the government to be “in crisis”.

But the sharpest criticism came from Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, who said:

“Until Keir Starmer is ready to grab the bull by the horns and confront the problems our country really faces, it makes little difference who sits where around the Cabinet table.”

That rings truer than any of the government spin.

“What’s the point?”

A friend of mine in the pub last night summed it up perfectly:

“What’s the point of these Cabinet ministers? None of them actually do anything!”

That is the real story of this reshuffle: representation is important – but representation without action is hollow.

So yes, we now have three women at the very top of government.

That is progress.

But if all it amounts to is a photo-op for Starmer while the country’s real crises are ignored, then what does it matter?

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