John Healey reveals Starmer has told cabinet to ‘go up a gear’

John Healey has revealed that Sir Keir Starmer has instructed his cabinet to “go up a gear”, following the prime minister's major reshuffle of his top team and junior ministers. Appearing on Sky News’ Sunday with Trevor Phillips, the defence minister described the Labour government’s first year in power as “really tough” but is now “starting to rebuild”. He said that Sir Keir has “put a new team in place and said to us all, ‘you've gotta go up a gear and you've gotta go up a gear to demonstrate that government can deliver for people’”. On Friday (5 September), following Angela Rayner’s resignation, Sir Keir began to swap around his cabinet, with David Lammy replacing Rayner as deputy prime minister and becoming justice minister, Yvette Cooper taking over as foreign secretary, and Shabana Mahmood becoming home secretary.