{"id":6296,"date":"2025-09-07T19:26:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T19:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/6296\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T19:26:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T19:26:06","slug":"keir-starmer-shakes-up-ministerial-team-in-northern-ireland-office-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/6296\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer shakes up ministerial team in Northern Ireland Office \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

UK prime minister Keir Starmer<\/a> has sacked one of his Northern Ireland<\/a> ministers as part of a wide-ranging reshuffle.<\/p>\n

Fleur Anderson, who was effectively the deputy minister to Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn<\/a>, said she was \u201cdisappointed\u201d to be leaving the job, which she held since Labour won last summer\u2019s election, having previously served as a similar shadow role since September 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cNorthern Ireland holds a special place in my heart,\u201d said the London-based MP Ms Anderson, who was popular among Irish officials and Government politicians who appreciated her genial style.<\/p>\n

Mr Benn survived the far-reaching cabinet reshuffle that was sparked on Friday by the resignation of Angela Rayner<\/a> as deputy prime minister and housing secretary, after an independent ethics adviser found she had inadvertently underpaid stamp duty on a new flat.<\/p>\n

Mr Benn\u2019s new deputy under secretary in the Northern Ireland Office is Matthew Patrick, a first-time MP who was part of the 2024 intake. He represents the constituency of Wirral West in Merseyside, taking over the seat previously held by Margaret Greenwood, who had been a front bencher under Jeremy Corbyn.<\/p>\n

Mr Patrick, who serves on a parliamentary foreign affairs committee, is known in Westminster as a passionate advocate for the families of Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas in the October 7th attacks. He is also a member of Labour Friends for Israel.<\/p>\n

A former councillor, Mr Patrick grabbed headlines in his local area during the pandemic after he posted a video of himself on social media eating a raw onion to demonstrate that he had lost his sense of taste after catching Covid.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Mr Benn met the T\u00e1naiste, Simon Harris, in Oxford on Friday at a conference run by the British Irish Association. Mr Harris said Britain and Ireland were \u201ceffectively there\u201d in terms of sealing an agreement over a framework to replace the controversial Legacy Act<\/a> that granted immunity to people including British soldiers for acts committed during the Troubles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK prime minister Keir Starmer has sacked one of his Northern Ireland ministers as part of a wide-ranging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,7038,43],"class_list":["post-6296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-politics","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}