Keir Starmer’s leaving party had been planned for some time. But in years to come it might be seen as the birth of a new Labour movement.
Dozens of ministers, aides and Starmer himself headed to the Grafton pub in Kentish Town on Monday night to drown their sorrows, hours after the former prime minister left Downing Street for the last time.
By 7pm, revellers had exhausted a £10,000 bar tab. But as a boozy late-night karaoke session started, several were learning they had lost their ministerial jobs, victims of what some believe was a purge of Starmer allies being punished for their loyalty to the former prime minister.
Now the group – at the centre of which are 11 former cabinet ministers – are considering how to cooperate in the future, whether in supporting the government of Andy Burnham or, occasionally, pointing out where it is going wrong.
“There was a lot of anger at the party,” said one person who was there. “There were some decent, competent people who seemed to be losing their jobs simply because they did not call for Keir Starmer to quit.”
One of Starmer’s biggest problems in government was that he did not have an identifiable faction of people who were willing to defend him at all costs – a symptom of both his late entry into politics and of his relative lack of ideology.
But many of those whom Burnham sacked or demoted after entering office did have one thing in common: they were close to the former prime minister and had not called for him to resign.
They included the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who turned down the chance to be education secretary; the prime minister’s chief secretary, Darren Jones; the attorney general and longtime Starmer friend, Richard Hermer, and the housing secretary, Steve Reed.
Many had been expected to lose their jobs as Burnham made space for his own allies. But others were more of a surprise. Nick Thomas-Symonds was ousted from his position as chief negotiator with the EU, Hilary Benn lost his job as Northern Ireland secretary, and at a more junior level, Alison Levitt, who worked with Starmer at the Crown Prosecution Service, was sacked from the Ministry of Justice.
Two people who previously worked at the heart of Starmer’s office in opposition, Jenny Chapman and Chris Ward, both lost their positions.
“Obviously Andy was always going to bring his own people in,” one Starmer ally said, “but the fact that he kept in everyone who called for Keir to go and ousted everyone who didn’t feels very deliberate.”
Burnham has said his cabinet “reflects the party, the country, all backgrounds”, and has promised to take a “one-team approach” within the Labour party.
Guardian analysis shows his first cabinet has a better gender balance than any other in history, although it is more privately educated than Starmer’s and less ethnically diverse than Rishi Sunak’s.
Now Starmer’s former ministers and advisers are thinking about how they can best contribute to the Labour party from outside the government. Jones showed one possible route on Tuesday morning when he publicly pointed out the flaws in Burnham’s plan to scrap the government’s digital ID scheme to pay for a cut in VAT on electricity bills.
“Good news that VAT will be cut on electricity bills. It’s a simple way for families to save a few quid, and to mechanically help to keep inflation that little bit lower,” he posted on X.
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“But the DigitalID program was unfunded. The government will have to set out how it will pay for its new policies at the budget.”
That post had an immediate impact, as Downing Street found itself having to defend how the policy was costed. Burnham told cabinet ministers to take a “hard look” at their budgets in a sign that they could soon be asked to make spending cuts to pay for some of his commitments.
Despite that, some close to Starmer believe Jones was wrong to question the new prime minister in such a public way. “I’m not sure that helped,” said one. “There is a risk it just makes us look bitter.”
But those who served at the top of Starmer’s government want to keep posing difficult questions to the prime minister, whether in public or private. There is talk of a new WhatsApp group, to be set up when MPs return in September, to help coordinate their efforts.
Some MPs are likely to take up committee roles, while others, including Starmer, will sit on the backbenches and only intervene on a limited number of issues. Several have careers in other fields that they can now return to, such as Hermer, who was a practising KC before Starmer appointed him to the government.
But given that many know the government’s accounts and priorities in detail, they are in a unique position to scrutinise Burnham’s decisions or point the way for others who wish to do so.
“Yes, we know where the bodies are buried,” said one Starmer ally. “But it’s not so much that, it’s more a case of explaining why we made the decisions we did, and what the downsides are of the ones Burnham might make instead.”
Others believe they will need to keep quiet at least in the short term, given the weight of support Burnham has in the party and, increasingly, the country.
But they say the example he has set in appointing his first government could come back to haunt him. “He has chosen not to reward loyalty to the leader,” said one Starmer ally. “That is sending out a message he may come to regret.”
