Healey Made Chancellor as Burnham Purges Starmer’s Ministers
Andy Burnham has confirmed a sweeping Cabinet on his first full day as Prime Minister, naming John Healey — the former defence secretary who quit over military funding — as Chancellor in a surprise choice. Ed Miliband becomes Foreign Secretary, Shabana Mahmood stays as Home Secretary, Angela Rayner returns to housing and Wes Streeting takes defence. Rachel Reeves, David Lammy and nine other Starmer-era ministers are out.
Mr Healey’s appointment over the more radical Mr Miliband is read as an attempt to calm markets, though his own demand for defence spending to reach three per cent of GDP now lands on his own Treasury desk. Mr Miliband, made Foreign Secretary, called it “the honour of my life”, recalling that his parents “came here as Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazis”. The clear-out — eleven who sat at Sir Keir Starmer’s Cabinet table gone — signals a decisive break rather than continuity, handing Mr Burnham a Cabinet of allies but a backbench of displaced heavyweights. Watch how gracefully that bloc behaves as spending choices sharpen.