If Keir Starmer thought that revamping the Downing Street team yesterday would boost his strategic image, he was sorely mistaken.

As recently as Sunday, Downing Street was reportedly insisting any plans for a reshuffle ‘had been put on ice’.

By yesterday morning, in a sign of the confusion and chaos that defines this administration, the sackings and promotions had duly begun.

Several Cabinet members, returning to Westminster after the summer break, only discovered what was happening through social media channels.

One minister harrumphed to me last night: ‘The first I knew was when I saw it on Twitter.’

There are two key lessons to be drawn from yesterday’s events.

Firstly, it appears that Starmer is increasingly choosing his own economic advisors at the cost of his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves—a decision that likely doesn’t bode well for her position.

Secondly, he seems convinced that his issue lies in communication—getting the Government’s message out—rather than in the governance itself.

 

As for the fate of the Chancellor, one minister put it succinctly when I asked him what it all meant: ‘Oh, it’s simple. Rachel is f***ed.’

The most significant adjustment was Darren Jones transitioning from Chief Secretary to the Treasury to taking up the newly created role of Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister.

This reeked of panic, and little wonder: a poll on Friday gave Nigel Farage’s Reform UK a 15 per cent lead over Labour.

Readers might recall Jones from a memorable Question Time episode some months back where he surprised a liberal audience by asserting: ‘The majority of people crossing the Channel in small boats are children, babies, and women.’

(In fact, adult males made up 73 per cent of arrivals between 2018 and 2025.)

Labour MPs I spoke to were baffled by his appointment. Jones has never been close to Starmer, and in his most recent role, he presided over a brutal public spending review that required almost every department to axe spending by 15 per cent over this Parliament.

One source told me: ‘Darren is the most unpopular member of the Cabinet because of the way that review was conducted.

‘The appointment is inexplicable and another wrong step.’

The second big change came when James Lyons, an experienced newspaper journalist, was ousted as Director of Communications, only five months after his predecessor Matthew Doyle suffered the same fate after less than a year in the role.

Starmer has now ploughed through four ‘comms directors’ in five years.

Replacing Lyons is Tim Allan, once a key adviser to Tony Blair, who was named the Government’s Executive Director of Communications.

Allan will work alongside Steph Driver, who is another Communications Director and has been with the PM since they were in Opposition.

One source told me it was clear that Allan would be in charge, but warned the appointment suggested growing desperation.

‘The Blair era is political light years away,’ said the source. ‘Will they be bringing Gordon Brown back next to advise on the Budget?’

Which brings me to matters economic. Last month, leading economists warned that Britain is heading towards a 1970s-style debt crisis and a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Many Labour MPs expect Reeves to raise taxes sharply at next month’s Budget, a move likely to worsen Labour’s dire poll ratings even further.

In a sign that Starmer recognises the country is on an abysmal fiscal trajectory, he brought in his own personal economics guru for the first time: Baroness Shafik, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England.

Anyone hoping for a change of course from socialist-style tax-and-spend will be disappointed: as an academic, Minouche Shafik argued for wealth taxes and (successfully) for the abolition of inheritance-tax relief on farms, a move that caused fury in rural communities.

Meanwhile, one of Reeves’s most trusted tax experts, Daniel York-Smith, was also confirmed as Starmer’s principal private secretary.

Another senior Labour figure told me: ‘The first person the PM used to turn to for economic advice was Rachel. Now he has his own economics adviser and York-Smith’s desk will be outside the PM’s study. Rachel will be second or third fiddle.’

The lessons of history here are not good: when Margaret Thatcher brought in Alan Walters as her personal economics adviser in 1989, her chancellor Nigel Lawson, whom the Iron Lady had described as ‘unassailable’, quit within a year.

But if Starmer is turning against his Chancellor, that is unsurprising.

The Treasury has been blamed by many in No 10 for the primary policy blunders of the past 12 months, from the winter fuel allowance fiasco to the botched attempt to cut £4billion in disability benefits, which was thwarted by Labour MPs.

Some of this blame is surely deserved.

Yet it’s also true that these policies were signed off by Starmer (who as PM, of course, is also First Lord of the Treasury).

Starmer will no doubt be praying that yesterday’s manoeuvres will at last put his shaky premiership on a solid footing.

‘This will turbo-charge the Government,’ one Labour source assured me.

But even his own supporters question the timing.

One ally of the PM told me: ‘These changes should have been done in the first week of recess so the new people could be bedded in – and we could hit the ground running on day one of the new parliamentary session. Instead, everyone is talking about yet another “reset” to try to reverse our dire poll ratings.

‘And if I hear one more of our people saying that deckchairs are being shuffled on the Titanic, I will scream. It’s a terrible look.’