Keir Starmer has appointed his cabinet, but who are the men and women who will be running Britain? The Spectator's writers, including Katy Balls, Kate Andrews and James Heale give the run down on Labour's top team:
Chancellor: Rachel Reeves
Kate Andrews: It is not strictly true to say that the government is out of money. Rachel Reeves is entering a Treasury that is taxing and spending at record levels. But the new Chancellor still has some very difficult choices to make, as it becomes increasingly clear that spending commitments have far-exceeded what the country can currently afford.
Reeves is expected to play hardball with her colleagues who want to turn on the spending taps. Having started her career as an economist at the Bank of England, the Leeds West and Pudsey MP has deliberately branded herself as someone who doesn't bend the rules. She remains committed to getting debt falling as a percentage of GDP in the medium term and promises not to borrow more money for day-to-day spending.
The young chess champion says she learned how to balance books with her mother at the kitchen table. Now she's the first woman to be doing so at the highest level in the Treasury. In her speech after being appointed Chancellor this weekend, Reeves described the opportunity as 'the honour of my life'. Speaking to Katy Balls in the magazine this week, she described her approach to the job as 'smashing glass ceilings and urinals'.
Two of Reeves's favourite buzzwords, so far, are stability and growth. Whenever asked about the dire state of the public finances, Reeves pivots to plans to grow the economy. It's a promise of Labour's that will be tested in the coming weeks - even before Reeves delivers her first fiscal event - as Labour gears up to announce a housing and planning overhaul to kickstart growth. Still, even if some growth is achieved, the new Chancellor has a big task on her hands to make the numbers add up - not least because of the outstanding questions over some Labour pledges (to keep the NHS long-term workforce plan, for example) which have not been costed but are expected to cost huge sums.
'I'll make sure that the sums always add up, bring that stability back so that businesses can plan with confidence for the future' she told Katy Balls. 'I think the investors like what they hear from me.' Reeves passed her first test with the markets on Friday morning, with practically no market reaction to the new Labour government (the ideal outcome). That was largely thanks to a Labour government already being priced in by investors, and (relative) confidence that Labour wouldn't rock the boat. But in order to tackle the UK's dire financial state, at some point, some gambles will need to be made.
Foreign Secretary: David Lammy
Katy Balls: Despite rumours that he might be moved aside to make way for a more experienced politician, David Lammy is Keir Starmer's Foreign Secretary. There's a challenging in tray, with war in Europe, conflict in the Middle East, tensions with China and a potential Donald Trump return. It's the latter that might be the most awkward given Lammy once described the former US President as a 'neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath'.
Lammy will need to work with allies for peace in the Middle East while avoiding internal party tensions emerging over Israel/Palestine. His party is committed to recognition of the Palestinian state. On China, one of the big questions awaiting a Starmer government is whether to restrict Beijing's ability to sell electric cars in the UK - and limit any diplomatic strain as a result. Labour's big foreign policy aim is to re-centre UK foreign policy back to Europe - unlocking rewards on trade and security as a result. On 18 July, the UK government will have a key opportunity to do this as it hosts the 47-nation European Political Community at Blenheim Palace. But he must contend with several European allies moving to the right. The biggest question is what does Starmer do about support for Ukraine if Trump enters the White House and significantly reduces funding or pushes for a compromise deal.
Home Secretary: Yvette Cooper
Ian Acheson: Yvette Cooper has two enormous challenges that can't wait for a honeymoon. The first is making her Border Command, the latest iteration in a long line of failed initiatives on controlling illegal migration, actually deliver. The second is restoring the status and importance of community policing in neighbourhoods marooned in criminal impunity with demoralised cops leaving in droves. Both require agility and energy from a Home Office with neither. Her formidable toughness needs to be turned inward. This is a hot seat on fire.
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Pat McFadden
Jawad Iqbal: Pat McFadden, the new Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has been described as the most powerful Labour politician most people have never heard of. His new job is one of the most senior in the cabinet, overseeing a department that is basically the engine room of government. His role is to ensure that the machinery of government in Downing Street - including the key cabinet committees where many decisions are made - is working efficiently. McFadden has been rewarded for his role in helping mastermind Labour's election victory, and is also valued for his wide-ranging political experience as a veteran of the Tony Blair era. He is also one of the few members of the new cabinet that has experience serving in government - under Gordon Brown he was parliamentary under-secretary at the Cabinet Office and later minister in the business department.
Defence Secretary: John Healey
Katy Balls: John Healey's first challenge in defence will come within the first week of a Labour government. On Tuesday, the new Defence Secretary will head to Washington for the Nato summit where the could face a mixed reception. The UK's allies will look at Labour's defence spending policy as a downgrade from that of the previous UK government. To great fanfare, Rishi Sunak announced on a visit to Poland that he would boost UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030. Labour's policy is to boost defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP 'as soon as resources allow'. They plan a defence review early on which ought to flesh out when that is.
The bigger picture is Healey - an experienced figure, respected on all sides - must deal with a depleted military which, in the words of a former defence secretary, has been 'hollowed out and underfunded' in recent years. He will be under pressure to replenish stockpiles, grow the army and boost morale. Labour has promised a new Armed Forces commissioner to focus on improving service life.
Justice Secretary: Shabana Mahmood
David Shipley: In a cabinet full of hard jobs, Shabana Mahmood arguably has the most difficult. The entire justice system is broken; the prisons are full; and even those inmates they can house often end up more addicted to drugs and more likely to reoffend after their time inside. Similarly, probation is a disaster, with a staffing crisis and soaring recall rates. Even the courts aren't functioning; cases often takes years to come to trial, with rising times for suspects on remand putting further pressure on the prison system. The Justice Secretary needs to recognise the interplay between these parts of her brief and move quickly to avert catastrophe.
Health Secretary: Wes Streeting
Isabel Hardman: Health is one of the key policy areas for Labour and will form part of the evidence that Starmer will offer to voters when he tries to persuade them to give him a second term. Streeting's first task is to deal with the industrial action in the NHS: talks are starting next week with the BMA junior doctors committee. He has a long-term aim to change the balance of funding in the NHS so that it is more focused on primary, preventive and community care rather than acute needs. This is a huge change and one ministers have previously paid lip service to. He also needs to work out what to do about social care, and about mental health reform, with long-overdue changes to the Mental Health Act due in the first King's Speech. The first big challenge will be in the winter. The NHS starts planning for each winter crisis about a year ahead, but this year will be particularly difficult given the lasting impact of the industrial action and the fact that the health service is running hot right now in the traditionally quieter summer period.
Environment Secretary: Steve Reed
James Heale: Labour's gains on Thursday night included impressive results in rural areas, which disproportionately swung to a party which has traditionally struggled in the countryside. The new Environment Secretary is Steve Reed, 60, who takes up the brief he has been shadowing since September. The main political challenge facing him is getting to grips with the sewage crisis which the opposition parties exploited to great effect against the Conservatives. Behind the scenes, he will also need to address the technical issues facing Britain's agricultural supply chain, to try and improve food security. Updating Defra's regulatory and governance framework will be critical too, especially given the party's promises made on planning. Reed himself is a London MP. He previously held the shadow justice brief from 2021 until 2023, having made his name as leader of Lambeth Founcil prior to entering parliament at a by-election in 2012.
Science Secretary: Peter Kyle
Katy Balls: Peter Kyle now leads the ministry of science, a department created under Rishi Sunak. His key challenges will be grappling with Big Tech and the rise of Artificial Intelligence. He will need to balance efforts to 'supercharge' the UK tech sector and encourage investment with UK regulation aimed at taming the wild west. There could be a stakeholder clash with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) when it comes to copyright demands from creatives and the growth of AI. Starmer believes AI could be used in public health as well as other industries, but this could face a union backlash if it appears to threaten jobs.
Education Secretary: Bridget Phillipson
James Heale: Bridget Phillipson arrives at the Department for Education with a full inbox to sort. Top of the list is recruiting the extra 6,500 teachers which Labour have promised, with schools now facing a recruitment and retainment crisis. Phillipson will be expected to decide teachers' pay for the forthcoming academic year within a matter of weeks, with the prospect of yet more industrial action being mooted. She will also have to deal with the fallout from the RAAC - reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete - scandal involving school buildings and the teething problems of the Conservatives' enhanced childcare rollout. Longer term, there is the perennial problem of further education, amid dire warnings about the state of university finances. Labour now represents every constituency with a Russell Group university in England, potentially boosting its prominence in government decision making. But Phillipson - a widely-tipped future Labour leader - could have her career made or broken by the success or failure of her party's flagship policy to impose VAT on school fees.
Energy Secretary: Ed Miliband
Ross Clark: Ed Miliband has one of the more challenging tasks ahead of him: fulfilling Labour's promise to decarbonise Britain's national grid by 2030 - a target which many people, from GMB boss Gary Smith to Jim Ratcliffe, founder of Ineos and a new Labour supporter, have warned can't be done. Miliband hasn't just vowed to decarbonise the grid; he has promised to lower consumer bills, too. While the Ofgem price cap has been on a steady downward trajectory over the past year, that is expected to change this autumn, giving the new climate change secretary a headache. He is also going to have his work cut out persuading developers to build the vast increase in wind and solar farms which are part of Labour's plan - when the last government held an auction for offshore wind last September it did not received a single bid. Miliband may find himself having to increase green energy subsidies - which will itself put upwards pressure on energy bills. He also intends to bring about a return to onshore turbines - which face running into heavy opposition, especially when local residents realise how much they have grown since they were last built inland in England.
Business Secretary: Jonathan Reynolds
Matthew Lynn: Smooth, diplomatic, and with few apparent aspirations to lead his party, Jonathan Reynolds will be quite a contrast to his immediate predecessor as Business Secretary, the pugnacious Kemi Badenoch. But he will also be just as crucial to the success of the Starmer government. Reynolds will face plenty of early challenges. He will need to decide whether to allow the Royal Mail to be taken over by the Czech tycoon Daniel Kretinsky, despite the reservations of the unions. He will also need to decide whether to help out Tata Steel as it closes furnaces in Wales. And, if Thames Water runs out of money, he will have to choose whether to take it into state ownership, as the party members would like, or keep private money involved, as the Treasury would prefer.
Transport Secretary: Louise Haigh
Ross Clark: First elected in 2015, red-haired Louise Haigh has not been an MP for a governing party before, but she has won praise from former policing minister Nick Hurd, who described her as the best shadow minister he had encountered in government. She faces what, for a Labour minister, will be an extremely agreeable task: overseeing the re-nationalisation of the railways. In contrast to previous nationalisations, this one comes with relatively low risk: it won't cost oodles of public money because it will be effected by taking franchises back into public hands only when they expire - which, utilising break clauses, can be achieved within the current parliament. However, renationalisation will present one difficulty: it will bring Haigh closer to the firing line when, as seems inevitable, bolshie rail unions next decide to strike. The SNP's renationalisation of the industry has done nothing to dent the unions' appetite for industrial act. Another perennial headache for Haigh will be potholes, which seem to have the ability to consume almost limitless quantities of public money. Rishi Sunak's £2.5 billion potholes fund seemed to be swallowed up without even touching the sides.
Culture Secretary: Lisa Nandy
Matthew Lesh: Labour have always been fully supportive of the Online Safety Act. Lisa Nandy will now have a lot of powers to set categories of priority illegal content and content that is harmful to children, along with directing Ofcom in how they carry out various responsibilities. This could mean even more pressure for removals on digital platforms. Labour's manifesto also contains a vague commitment to bring forward provisions to the Act to keep people safe. Could this mean a return of the 'legal but harmful' sections, that would have required social media sites to remove content that ministers decide is wrong but otherwise legal? Labour opposed the removal of these sections from the bill during the parliamentary debate.
Work and Pensions Secretary: Liz Kendall
Michael Simmons: Liz Kendall shortly moves into the DWP's Caxton House offices as Work and Pensions Secretary and has one of the biggest in trays of any minister in Starmer's new cabinet. The tax rises that Sunak tried to scare voters with are inevitable, economists say, in no small part because of the burgeoning benefits bill: forecast to surge during this parliament with nearly 1,000 Britons signed off sick every single day. Kendall will have to make drastic reforms - which many of Labour's voters will find unpalatable - if she's to get the 5.6 million on out-of-work benefits number down and avoid not just an economic tragedy but a human one too. What's more she'll be bearing the brunt of the pressure on Labour to abolish George Osborne's two child benefit cap - something Labour's manifesto writers felt was impossible to fund.
Northern Ireland Secretary: Hilary Benn
Andrew McQuillan: Hilary Benn - who during the Brexit era lent his name to the Act which bounced the Johnson Government into accepting a sub-optimal deal from the EU - now has a chance to undo some of the damage. As Northern Ireland Secretary, patching up the Windsor Framework and removing some of the barriers to pan-UK trade will get top billing, something which will likely see the whole of the UK align closer with the EU. He is likely to be sucked very quickly into the quagmire of identity games which passes for politics in Northern Ireland. He will win some brownie points for getting rid of the Conservatives' controversial Troubles legacy legislation. But on the question of a referendum regarding Irish unification, Benn will likely disappoint Sinn Fein et al; he has reiterated the Starmer line that it is not 'on the horizon' anytime soon.
Welsh Secretary: Jo Stevens
James Heale: Jo Stevens, 57, takes up the Welsh Secretary brief which she twice shadowed in opposition. Labour had an excellent set of results in Wales - winning 27 out of the 32 seats there - in spite of Vaughan Gething's woes in the Senedd. Stevens will be a key link between Gething and Starmer. A passionate pro-European, Stevens has sat for Cardiff constituencies since 2015, having previously worked as a lawyer at Thompsons Solicitors - a firm with longstanding links to the trade union movement. She also chairs the parliamentary group for GMB: one of Labour's most important unions.
Scotland Secretary: Ian Murray
Lucy Dunn: Ian Murray has been made Scotland Secretary after holding the shadow cabinet role for since 2015. For eight years the only Scottish Labour MP in Westminster, Murray will now have to adjust to the influx of over 30 colleagues from the north of the border - and the cabinet secretary is known to be a little wary about the extra competition. Murray will have work to do in repairing relations between Holyrood and Westminster, fulfilling Labour's manifesto promise of directing more money to Scotland and improving devolution to 'push power out of Holyrood' to better support local government. With a Scottish election just two years away, Murray will have to ensure Labour lives up to its promise that it'll 'maximise Scotland's influence' if his party's MSPs want a decent shot at pushing out the SNP.