Two titanic issues will define the remaining four years of this Parliament and, in his Cabinet reshuffle, Keir Starmer has at least spotted them.
After just a year in government, it seems premature to characterise the Prime Minister’s selection as the ‘last roll of the dice’ but if Pat McFadden and Shabana Mahmood cannot get a grip of welfare reform and illegal immigration respectively, Sir Keir will not have a political future.
The country needs to see some policy delivery in the next few months or he risks being a one-term PM.
That urgency should focus attention on these two most crucial Cabinet briefs.
While a third, largely unnoticed and relatively low-profile job –that of Scottish Secretary – tells us much about Sir Keir’s loyalty and judgment.
Or lack thereof – more of which later.
The Labour Government has already come to grief on the torrid subject of welfare reform and the perennial and urgent task of moving millions of working-age adults off benefits and into work.
This is an existential challenge: if it is not met, in a generation Britain will simply be unable to afford to fund the welfare state.
Labour Party Leader Sir Keir Starmer (right) seen with Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner (left) arrive for the 2021 Labour conference on September 25, 2021 in Brighton
Labour Party Deputy leader Angela Rayner speaks during the launch of Labour’s Local Election campaign on March 30, 2023 in Swindon
Yet when former work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall tried to convince her fellow Labour MPs that dodging reform was simply not an option, they refused to vote for her solutions.
And when Sir Keir himself capitulated to his worried backbenchers’ demands, Ms Kendall found herself abandoned and the reforms were scrapped.
Her replacement, Pat McFadden, faces the same challenge – to save billions on the welfare bill and convince claimants they would be better off in work.
As one of the more intellectual of his colleagues, Mr McFadden is certainly qualified for the task and is a popular and respected figure in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
His credentials as a working-class boy raised in Glasgow won’t hurt either.
But the problem he faces is the same one Ms Kendall faced: the Labour Party itself.
Too many of his parliamentary colleagues are simply averse to making unpopular decisions and arguing the case for them back home in their constituencies.
They never signed up to be disliked and no one seems to have told them that government involves, for the most part, making difficult, not easy, decisions.
MP Shabana Mahmood who has been appointed to the role of Home Secretary leaves 10 Downing Street, during a reshuffle by the British government following the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner in London, Britain, September 5, 2025
Angela Raynor, Shadow Secretary of State for Education addresses crowds during a large scale demonstration against austerity and the Conservative government on September 29, 2019 in Manchester
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to ship builders during a visit to BAE Systems Scotstoun on September 4, 2025 in Glasgow
The agenda confronting new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is, if anything, more daunting than Mr McFadden’s.
At the top of her priorities is the small-boats crisis, a seemingly insoluble issue so long as the asylum application and deportation processes remain unreformed.
Ms Mahmood, however, may be just the woman to do that.
This is the justice secretary, remember, who took on the arrogant, entitled judiciary when they issued new sentencing guidelines that would have meant softer sentences for
ethnic minorities and trans people. She faced down their lordships, who were not best pleased at being over-ruled, especially by an elected politician.
But Ms Mahmood prevailed in a victory for common sense.
She is also one of the (far too) few Labour politicians who has unconditionally supported women’s rights against the encroachment of ‘trans women’ (biological men), earning her the enmity of trans rights activists.
Someone willing to stand up to these powerful vested interests might be just the woman to take on the smuggling gangs and the civic society blob that makes change so difficult.
Someone who will not be playing a role in the Government is former Scottish Secretary Ian Murray, who was unexpectedly fired and replaced by Douglas Alexander.
Alexander is a formidable politician who did the same job in Tony Blair’s administration.
But Murray’s sacking makes very little sense and could do Sir Keir some serious harm.
Murray has won plaudits and admiration for having represented the Scottish Labour cause for the past decade, most of that time as the party’s sole Scottish MP.
He is popular among colleagues and journalists and is known to be hard-working. Which makes Sir Keir’s decision to fire one of his strongest supporters all the more perplexing.
Among the 37-strong group of Scottish Labour MPs, Sir Keir’s move has already caused serious resentment – a self-inflicted headache he could well do without.
Few outside the Westminster bubble notice or care about such personal dramas.
Their low opinion of this government will only change if Mr McFadden and Ms Mahmoud effect real change in their departments and the country.
But that will depend entirely on how willing their own Labour colleagues are to vote for meaningful change, even if it’s unpopular in the short term.
And it will depend on the quality of the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer, a man who, in this reshuffle, has proved his willingness to be radical and unreliable in equal measure.
