Starmer set for a shake-up as fallout persists

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was poised last night to carry out a reshuffle of his shadow cabinet team, as the fallout over the party’s dismal election performance continues.

Sir Keir has come under fire after opting to sack his deputy Angela Rayner from her role as party chairman and national campaign co-ordinator on Saturday – with Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham warning him that it was “wrong”, tweeting: “I can’t support this”.

But the Opposition leader will look to reshape his top team further across the weekend as he looks to reverse the party’s downward spiral in England.

As well as undertaking a reshuffle, the former director of public prosecutions has also hired Gordon Brown’s former chief pollster Deborah Mattinson – who has written a book about why Labour lost the socalled “red wall” at the 2019 general election – as director of strategy.

It comes after Labour received a drubbing in some parts of England, losing control of a host of councils and suffering defeat at the hands of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in the Hartlepool by-election – the first time the constituency has gone blue since its inception in the 1970s.

The sacking of Ms Rayner signals cracks at the top of the party, with rows over who was to blame for the election strategy that saw losses in former industrial areas that have traditionally supported Labour.

The party lost control of Durham council for the first time in a century, saw its leader deposed by the Greens in Sheffield and also witnessed heavy defeats in Rotherham and Sunderland at local authority level.