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28 February 2025

Anneliese Dodds’ resignation is a warning to Keir Starmer

The Prime Minister will need to do more to reassure Labour’s browbeaten soft left.

By Andrew Marr

So, she went. All Westminster had been wondering whether Anneliese Dodds, the international development minister, would resign over Keir Starmer’s decision to fund higher defence spending by cutting overseas aid (as I suggested she may on the New Statesman podcast).

Yesterday, I was assured by an Anneliese-friendly cabinet minister that she wouldn’t. Dodds is one of the most reasonable, loyal, unshowy of politicians. She faithfully accepted her demotion from the job of shadow chancellor in 2021 and since then she had been a “just-get-on-with-it” slogger for the Labour cause. Not now.

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