\n<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer has been warned by senior Labour figures to stop making mistakes, before a battle over the party\u2019s deputy leadership and amid fears the government could row back on workers\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n
As candidates began to jostle to replace Angela Rayner, the prime minister faced public criticism from Emily Thornberry, a potential contender, who said further mistakes from Starmer could lead to having to \u201chand our country to [Nigel] Farage\u201d.<\/p>\n
Andy Burnham also called for a \u201creset\u201d and more pluralistic style, telling the Guardian that the government needed to be \u201clistening to the heartbeat of the party\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Greater Manchester mayor, considered a future candidate to succeed Starmer, cannot run for the deputy leadership but he endorsed either Louise Haigh or Lucy Powell \u2013 two former cabinet ministers sacked by the prime minister.<\/p>\n
At the same time, union leaders advised Starmer on Sunday against any attempt to water down Angela Rayner\u2019s employment rights bill, which is still making its way through parliament.<\/p>\n
Rayner\u2019s employment minister, Justin Madders, was also removed from his job in the reshuffle. He said on Sunday it \u201cwould be really, really foolish for the government to row back on key manifesto commitments that are popular with the public and will show what a positive difference a Labour government can make\u201d.<\/p>\n
Downing Street and Labour sources insisted the legislation would proceed despite pressure from businesses to water down some of the protections against unfair dismissal. One senior government source said: \u201cThis reshuffle is about boosting growth, productivity and making people better off. Higher pay and stronger rights for working people is a key part of the government\u2019s programme.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, there was still a high degree of nervousness among unions, with Peter Kyle, the new business secretary, phoning general secretaries this weekend to reassure them that the bill would go ahead.<\/p>\n
Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, urged the prime minister to commit to implementing the legislation \u201cin full\u201d; while the Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham, said: \u201cIf they don\u2019t become a workers\u2019 government, the workers will seek other answers. The stark warnings are already there.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is understood Starmer\u2019s first meeting of his reshuffled cabinet on Tuesday will focus solely on growing the economy.<\/p>\n
No 10 is braced for a deputy leadership contest in which candidates publicly criticise Starmer\u2019s first year in government, and during which Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform party has risen in the polls.<\/p>\n
They have attempted to head off the criticism with a decisive reshuffle of ministers and change of senior aides in No 10, acknowledging that they want to speed up the pace of policies.<\/p>\n
However, there is already deep anxiety among Labour MPs about the direction of the reshuffle, which promoted a number of ministers seen as being favoured by the right of the party, including Shabana Mahmood, Pat McFadden, and Peter Kyle.<\/p>\n
One senior Labour source said the reshuffle was an example of \u201cgroupthink\u201d, adding that whether \u201cthey win or lose in May, it\u2019s all on them as there\u2019s no one now who isn\u2019t signed up to this way of working. It\u2019s clear from this reshuffle they aren\u2019t interested in listening.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is going to reinforce rather than solve their problems – the deputy contest then takes on the form of an intervention and not just filling a vacancy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thornberry told the BBC\u2019s Laura Kuenssberg: \u201cDomestically, things just don\u2019t seem to be working \u2026 People hear about the mistakes. And the question is, why are we making these mistakes?<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t afford to keep doing this, because we\u2019ve gone from having the fantastic gift from the British public of a huge majority to now being at 20% in the polls, and we will have in the next election the biggest fight of our lives coming against Farage. And the last thing we want is to go from a position where it was thought we would be in for two terms, to hand our country over to Farage.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking to the Guardian, Burnham issued a similar message on the need for greater listening across the party. \u201cLabour\u2019s got to be less factional and more inclusive, more pluralistic. If he\u2019s going to rise to the challenge ahead of us, all parts of the Labour family need to be involved and engaged in adding what they can. And certainly the Labour governments I was in worked more like that.\u201d<\/p>\n The Guardian can also reveal that Burnham is backing a new political network on called Mainstream, which is drawn largely from the soft left and aims to influence the direction of the party.<\/p>\n Steered by the thinktank Compass, it is planning to mobilise a grassroots motion at party conference demanding the abolition of the two-child benefit cap, as well as aiming to campaign in constituency Labour parties and across the country for what they describe as bold but practical reforms.<\/p>\n Burnham said he was concerned about the balance of the cabinet after the reshuffle and the deputy leadership contest was a moment to try to shift the party away from being London-centric. One of his preferred candidates, Haigh, who resigned last year over a scandal about a conviction for fraud over a missing mobile phone, is understood not to have made up her mind whether to run.<\/p>\n However, there is likely to be a huge array of candidates battling for nominations as soon as the terms of the contest are decided by the national executive committee on Monday.<\/p>\n These could include David Lammy, Lisa Nandy and Shabana Mahmood in the cabinet; Haigh, Powell, Jess Phillips, Stella Creasy, Thornberry, Sarah Owen, Anneliese Dodds, Dawn Butler and Meg Hillier on the backbenches; plus Richard Burgon, Nadia Whittome and others more on the left of the party.<\/p>\n MPs and their supporters are already frantically sounding out colleagues to see if their bids are viable. One MP tipped Phillips as gaining support, saying she was \u201can ideal successor to Angela [Rayner]. Brave, strong, principled, clear values, great communicator, sounds like a normal person.\u201d<\/p>\n The party\u2019s ruling national executive committee is scheduled to meet on Monday to outline a timetable for the deputy leadership election. Burgon, a former shadow cabinet minister under Jeremy Corbyn, called on the committee \u201cnot to skew the process to deliver the outcome the current leadership wants but ensure this is a fully democratic process\u201d. Butler also urged the party not to \u201cshy away from a fair process when selecting our next deputy leader\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Keir Starmer has been warned by senior Labour figures to stop making mistakes, before a battle over the party\u2019s deputy leadership and amid fears the government could row back on workers\u2019 rights. As candidates began to jostle to replace Angela Rayner, the prime minister faced public criticism from Emily Thornberry, a potential contender, who said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[7836,1346,134,167,1897,10970,1347,415],"class_list":{"0":"post-19736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-figures","9":"tag-keir","10":"tag-labour","11":"tag-making","12":"tag-mistakes","13":"tag-senior","14":"tag-starmer","15":"tag-stop"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}