The real reason behind Keir Starmer's reshuffle
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 September 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
Labour's new home secretary Shabana Mahmood has barely got her feet under the desk, but already the rhetoric out of the home office has changed. Countries that don't "play ball" on migrant returns could lose visas - Mahmood stressing she will do "whatever it takes" to secure Britain's borders and stop the boats.
Her appointment appears to be a tacit admission that Labour's first year has failed on migration - and in response, it looks like Keir Starmer has tacked right in the hope of beating off Reform. On welfare, suggestions too that Labour could be set to reattempt their botched reforms of last term - more pain for Labour's left.
If Starmer's reshuffle pushes this Labour government to the right - how does that fit with Labour's deputy leadership contest? Already senior Labour figures like Andy Burnham have been out of the traps to criticise the shake up and suggest an alternative prospectus for government. And with a contest set to drag on for weeks and weeks, will the race to succeed Angela Rayner risk unpicking Starmer's attempt to show his government has turned a page?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.6 | This is a global player original podcast. As a new Home Secretary, I will be looking to go |
| 0:15.1 | further and faster because I am very clear I have one top priority in this job and that is to secure the borders. |
| 0:22.5 | I will do whatever it takes. |
| 0:24.6 | And for those who've worked with me already in government and in my previous brief, |
| 0:27.8 | I think people can tell I'm not the sort of person that hangs around. |
| 0:30.4 | That is the voice of Kirstama's new Home Secretary. |
| 0:34.2 | Shabana Mahmood promising to do whatever it takes to stop the small boat's problem. |
| 0:39.3 | Is that what the reshuffle was always all about? Has it changed the entire tenor of the Stama plan? |
| 0:47.3 | And what will a brand new Labour deputy leader do to this project? |
| 0:52.3 | Welcome to the Newsagents. |
| 0:59.3 | The Newsagents. It's Lewis. It's Emily. And on Friday when we left off and we were still sort of digesting the news of Angela Rainer's resignation and we were starting to get the first glimmers of the reshuffle, |
| 1:12.7 | which turned out to be a pretty dramatic reshuffle in the sense that not lots of new people |
| 1:17.9 | join the cabinet, but it's certainly true to say that Kirstama really did shuffle the pack, |
| 1:22.1 | including the top, well, two of the very top job. |
| 1:25.1 | So Yvette Cooper became foreign secretary and was replaced by |
| 1:28.8 | Shabana McMood, who was a justice secretary, very, very well thought of by number 10. I mean, |
| 1:34.2 | actually, one of the most interesting things overall is that virtually every home office minister |
| 1:37.8 | was removed and replaced. The focus of this reshuffle seemed basically to end up being about |
| 1:43.4 | small boats. We'll talk about |
| 1:44.8 | that a little bit more in a second. Other people getting new jobs, Steve Reed, became the housing |
| 1:49.8 | secretary replacing Angela Rainer. He was the environment secretary that went to Emma Reynolds, |
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