{"id":702948,"date":"2026-07-21T07:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T07:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/702948\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T07:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T07:09:08","slug":"cull-of-starmer-allies-as-new-chancellor-faces-crunching-spending-choices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/702948\/","title":{"rendered":"Cull of Starmer allies as new Chancellor faces crunching spending choices"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A government ends and a new government begins, determined to make a splash with its early policy announcements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">We can expect to see and hear plenty from the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham and his senior ministers in the coming days, making arguments, travelling the country and trying to make an impact.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Burnham&#8217;s new cabinet will meet for the first time at lunchtime.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Its appointment became something of a nocturnal affair.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At gone 22:00 BST on Monday night, there was still a minibus full of ministerial wannabes inside Downing Street waiting for their new positions to be confirmed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One of the later posts to be filled was that of defence secretary, a role taken by Wes Streeting, whose resignation as health secretary two months ago contributed to the draining of Sir Keir Starmer&#8217;s authority as prime minister.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The story of the reshuffle can best be summarised as neither of the two ministers most widely talked up as chancellor &#8211; Shabana Mahmood and Ed Miliband &#8211; getting that job, it instead going to John Healey. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And there being a pretty significant cull of the ministers closest to and most loyal to the now former prime minister: think David Lammy, Darren Jones, Peter Kyle, Lord Hermer, Steve Reed and Rachel Reeves \u2013 albeit Reeves, I am told, was offered a cabinet post but turned it down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A government ends and a new government begins, determined to make a splash with its early policy announcements.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":702949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-702948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/702949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}