There were some in Labour who never expected Louise Haigh to enter Keir Starmer’s cabinet. Both allies and sceptics questioned whether the soft-left 37-year-old – who nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership – would make it to the top table. That she did – becoming the youngest-ever female cabinet minister – was a reflection of the esteem in which Starmer held her. Haigh was deemed to have mastered her transport brief in opposition and so made the transition to government.
But this morning she became the first cabinet minister to resign from Starmer’s six-month-old administration. The trigger was a Sky News story which revealed that Haigh was convicted of fraud by misrepresentation in 2015 after wrongly reporting that her work mobile phone was stolen in 2013.
“Some time later, I discovered that the handset in question was still in my house,” she writes in her resignation letter to Starmer. “I should have immediately informed my employer [Aviva] and not doing so straight away was a mistake.” In a familiar line, Haigh adds that she has resigned to avoid becoming a “distraction from delivering on the work of this government”.
But the story doesn’t end here. The Conservatives are asking why Starmer – who Haigh says she informed of her now-spent conviction when she joined the shadow cabinet in 2020 – appointed her at all. “The onus is now on Keir Starmer to explain this obvious failure of judgement to the British public,” a spokesperson says.
Meanwhile, Labour insiders are asking whether a more Blairite figure would have retained their position. As I reported back in October, some MPs had predicted that Haigh would become the first cabinet casualty after she clashed with No 10 over P&O Ferries. Having urged consumers to boycott the firm – which sacked 800 workers without notice – she was rebuked by Downing Street as it sought to save a £1bn investment from parent company DP World (“Louise Haigh’s comments were her own personal views and did not represent the views of the government,” a spokesperson said then). Allies, however, point out that only two weeks ago she led the Sunday broadcast round – a mark that she was still trusted by No 10.
Along with Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and Lisa Nandy, Haigh was regarded as part of an informal soft left cabinet grouping. Some in Labour circles believe her departure is a prelude to further marginalisation (a cabinet reshuffle is expected next year).
But it’s worth noting that in his letter to Haigh, Starmer writes: “You have made huge strides to take our rail system back into public ownership through the creation of Great British Railways”. That’s a signal that he remains committed to this policy, which is among Labour’s most popular (one mistake often made in analysis of Starmer is the belief that he is always looking for an excuse to junk any vaguely left-wing measure). The same is true of the Buses Bill, which reverses the Thatcher-era ban on establishing new publicly-owned bus companies.
Haigh was proud of such policy activism (one ally dubs her “the secretary of state for doing things”) and Starmer does hold out the prospect of a return to government: “I know you still have a huge contribution to make in the future,” he writes. But while Haigh’s swift resignation prevented a drawn-out controversy, some in Labour fear it has set a low bar for future departures.
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