While Rachel Reeves enjoys a rare moment of political sunshine, Keir Starmer's stuck under storm clouds - juggling a backbench rebellion and a prison reform headache.
Read all about it in this week's Who's Top Who's Not.
Top: Rachel Reeves
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is enjoying a rare moment of sunshine amidst stormy political skies this week. New data shows that the UK economy grew by a respectable 0.7% in the first quarter of the year, a welcome development for a government eager to prove its credibility on economic management.
Adding to the momentum, Reeves has appointed Jim O’Neill, a senior executive at the Bank of America as the new second permanent secretary to the Treasury. The signal is clear: she wants private sector muscle driving the government’s growth agenda, not just public sector spreadsheets. It also reflects Labour’s broader push to recast itself as pro-business and pro-growth.
But, before Reeves can relax, there is a catch. The 0.7% growth figure predates the implementation of Reeves’ controversial £25bn national insurance increase which came into force in April. The proof is therefore in the fiscal pudding, and the real impact of that policy remains to be seen as this could complicate the government’s narrative if business sentiment sours or hiring slows. Still, this good news should not be entirely discounted and offers a moment of respite in an otherwise complicated week in Whitehall.
Middle: Shabana Mahmood
This week, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced plans to invest £4.7bn to implement early release schemes and build new prisons after declaring that prison regimes in England and Wales are “on the brink of collapse” and operating at 99% capacity.
Mahmood’s approach reflects a shift towards a more rehabilitative and pragmatic criminal justice policy, grappling with the need to balance public safety with the realities of prison capacity constraints.
However, Mahmood doesn’t have a captive audience. The threat of prisoners on the lose has provided political ammunition for those on the right, whilst penal reform advocates and centrists argue that building more prisons won’t solve the underlying issues or address the root cause of overcrowding. Whilst this may be a necessary intervention, Mahmood’s plans will continue to face trial, leaving the government cuffed to the consequences.
Not: Sir Kier Starmer
It has been a tricky week for Prime Minister Kier Starmer. Still bruised from Labour’s underwhelming local election results, Starmer must now reconcile the discontent brewing on the backbenches. Murmurs of rebellion are growing increasingly louder over government plans to cut disability benefits with more than 40 of the party’s MPs signing a joint letter urging ministers to think again. The rebellion is set to be one of Starmer’s largest internal challenges to date, and he will have to rely on the backing of his cabinet to calm the storm. The concerns of backbenchers also strike at the heart of Labour’s commitment to protect the most vulnerable, raising difficult questions about the Party’s internal direction.
To make matters worse, Starmer has faced further backlash from both progressives and centrists over his stance on immigration, where he warned that the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without a tougher approach. The surge of Reform at the local elections creates an additional dimension to this issue as there is now an understanding that his electoral fate will depend on whether the government can bring the numbers of net migration down. At least there’s not a political party that recently did very well in the local elections whose whole thing is curbing immigration numbers…
Tension over both immigration and welfare, traditionally key pillars of Labour ideology, has exposed some of the core political and ideological fault lines within the Labour Party that might prove difficult to contain for Starmer.