U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer carried out a sweeping Cabinet reshuffle Friday after Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner resigned over a tax error, marking the most damaging departure yet for his Labour government.
Rayner, 45, a figurehead among Labour’s left-wing base, stepped down as both deputy prime minister and deputy Labour leader after Britain’s independent adviser on ministerial standards ruled she had breached the ministerial code by failing to seek proper advice on a property transaction that left her underpaying roughly £40,000 ($54,000) in tax. She said she “deeply regretted” the mistake, accepted “full responsibility,” and cited the toll on her family.
Her resignation triggered the largest reshuffle since Labour’s landslide election win in July 2024, as Starmer sought to reset his embattled 14-month-old government, which has lurched from one crisis to another and recently slipped behind Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK in opinion polls.
Starmer named Foreign Secretary David Lammy as the new deputy prime minister, while Interior Minister Yvette Cooper moved to replace him as Britain’s top diplomat. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, from Labour’s right wing, will succeed Cooper at the Home Office, with Lammy also set to take on the justice brief, Downing Street announced. Starmer also sacked Commons leader Lucy Powell and Scotland Minister Ian Murray in the shake-up, while making changes in the environment, business, and science and technology portfolios.
