It’s been less than 24 hours since Keir Starmer was handed the keys to 10 Downing Street and he has already ushered in his new cabinet.
Sir Keir, who is now Britain’s 58th prime minister, took no time in appointing many of the key players who are set to shape his government – and the country – over the next five years.
While many of those who secured the cabinet roles were unsurprising for most, some of their backgrounds paint a more interesting picture.
From an Oxford graduate who starred in Byker Grove to the renowned ‘Dr Doom’ who became a household name during Covid and even the chief executive of Timpsons, there are plenty of noteworthy characters taking up the top jobs.
Here looks at some of the newly appointed members on Sir Keir’s team and how they came to be part of this Labour government.
Bridget Phillipson – Education Secretary
Bridget Phillipson was a high-achiever with an interest in acting that landed her a role as an extra in Byker Grove before winning a place at Oxford University.
Ms Phillipson said her mother had signed her up for drama class from a very young age as ‘she was quite shy’ and ‘needed to learn to be a bit more confident’.
This lead to her becoming an extra in the hit British teen drama, which also featured the likes of Ant and Dec among its star studded cast.
‘I played a part going in to a school and I played a part hanging around a music venue waiting for a group or something to arrive,’ Phillipson told the BBC’s Nick Robinson in an interview in 2022.
‘The way these things work on television it takes all day to get a very very short clip of a group of us walking into a school or whatever it was.’
She went on to become MP for Houghton and Sunderland South in 2010, at the age of 26, after working for several years at the women’s refuge her mother founded.
Ms Phillipson came from a struggling single-parent family but says she was far from the worst off in her class. Although she has admitted that she was bullied in class for being so poor.
‘Parents didn’t want their children mixing with people like me, or coming to where we lived. As time wore on, frankly I wouldn’t blame them, because it wasn’t a great place to be. The street was on a downward spiral,’ Ms Phillipson told The TImes.
Her upbringing has shaped her approach to the role of shadow education secretary, in which she has outlined Labour’s mission to smash the ‘class ceiling’ by removing barriers to opportunity for less advantaged children.
To the disappointment of some on the Labour left, free school meals – of which Ms Phillipson was a recipient while growing up – did not feature in the party manifesto.
Instead, it commits to free school breakfast clubs to prevent children starting lessons hungry.
Sir Patrick Vallance – Minister of State of Science
Sir Patrick Vallance became a household name during the Covid-19 pandemic, frequently appearing on TV screens across the nation for the government’s daily briefings.
The former chief scientific adviser is often remembered for delivering some bleak projections about the state of the country, earning him the nickname ‘Dr Doom’.
But, after quitting his role in 2022, the 64-year-old is now set to make surprising return to Whitehall – as a Minister of State of Science.
Vallance has been a big advocate for Labour’s green policies, having voiced support for the party’s ambition to decarbonise Britain’s electricity supplies by 2030.
He was heavily involved in the COP26 climate negotiations. and also leads the Net Zero Innovation Board, which provides strategic oversight of Government funding of net zero innovation programmes.
Sir Patrick was first appointed to the role in 2018, replacing his friend Sir Chris Whitty who was temporarily given the position.
Before then, he was an academic and a consultant physician as well as the president of research and development at GlaxoSmithKline.
He was among the key scientists who spoke to the public about Covid during the now famous televised briefings from Government on the pandemic, often standing alongside the PM and ministers.
Although, his response to the virus has not been without controversy.
In March 2020 he was forced to defend the Government’s ‘herd immunity’ approach to not shutting down schools in the initial wave of restrictions.
He was also criticised for presenting a now infamous chart in one of the televised briefings in October that year suggesting there could be a shocking 4,000 deaths per day by December 20 if pandemic restrictions were not imposed.
But the figures came from an outdated model based on a projection that there would be 1,000 deaths per day by the start of November.
Some anti-lockdown Tory MPs labelled these projections as ‘scare mongering’. But Sir Patrick said it was his not his job to spread optimism but to give ministers the data that they needed to make decisions.
The scientist has, however, also been praised for saying Covid management must become similar to flu.
Sir Patrick was born in Essex in 1960 and educated at Truro school in Cornwall, which costs nearly £30,000 to board now.
He had considered being a chef but then began a life in science and medicine at university before going to GSK.
It would be the role that catapulted him to the prominence he holds today, so well-known he has own entry in Who’s Who, which lists his hobbies as ‘mushrooming, cooking, gardening’ and ‘playing tennis badly’.
Just 12 days into the job he was rubbing shoulders with royalty, pictured with Prince Andrew at an event.
After six years at GSK his base salary as Executive Director was £780,000 a year.
When he left he cashed in £5 million worth of shares he got from them from his time working there until March 2018.
And in 2017 when he took up the role of Government Chief Scientific Adviser Nature, the international weekly science journal, said his salary was up to £180,000 a year – more than the Prime Minister.
Vallance lives with his family in a substantial semi-detached Victorian house worth £1.8million, which they bought in 2018 with cash.
They had to complete extensive renovations after it had been left completely gutted by a fire before they were involved in the property. It is not known whether it belongs to his doctor wife Sophia Ann or any of their children.
The property is one of the largest on the well-heeled street, which is lined with expensive cars.
James Timpson – Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation
James Timpson, chief executive of his father’s Timpsons shoe repair chain business, was made the new minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation during the new Prime Minister’s appointments on Friday.
Mr Timpson OBE’s newly earned position well renowned for his work advocating for ex-convicts and passion for business.
Chair of the Employers Forum for Reducing Re-offending (EFFRR) until 2016, the Timpson’s boss has been applauded for his schemes rehabilitating offenders.
That same year, he became Chair of the Prison Reform Trust establishing Employment Advisory Board network throughout the country to help improve job opportunities for prison leavers.
For his very active work in getting disadvantaged people in employment and training, the new cabinet member was awarded in OBE in 2011.
Namely, the retailer’s CEO employed ex-prisoners in branches of his family’s business in a bid to rehabilitate them.
According to The Mirror, the UK business has now hired 600 ex-criminals throughout the UK.
He told the publication in 2019: ‘If you employ an ex-offender, someone long-term unemployed, a veteran, a care leaver, or someone who is disabled, the employer should not pay national insurance for the first 12 months.’
Whilst being well involved in the day-to-day runnings of his family’s business since 2002, the managing director has managed to up company profits from £3 million to over an eye-watering £20 million.
His success in business has been well recognised, with Timpson being showered in awards such as the David Goldman Visiting Professor of Innovation for 2012/13, at the Newcastle University Business School for inspiring business minded people.
Later in 2015, he was an ambassador for the then Prince of Wales – King Charles – holding responsibility for business in the North West.
So well revered for his business acumen, Mr Timpson was one of five co-chairs advising on how to create optimal business conditions post-Brexit during Theresa May’s tenure. Three years ago Timpson was reappointed trustee of the Tate.
Richard Hermer KC – Attorney General
Richard Hermer is a high-profile human rights lawyer from Matrix Chambers, said to command the respect of others at the bar.
Mr Hermer, who was called to the Bar in 1993 and appointed Queen’s Counsel 16 years later, is arguably one of the most surprising appointments to Sir Keir’s cabinet.
It was thought the now Prime Minister would appoint Emily Thornberry as Attorney General, but she was brutally brushed aside in favour of Mr Hermer who has been given a peerage to take on the role.
It will be a bitter pill for Ms Thornberry to swallow with herself a former criminal barrister and having been in Sir Keir’s shadow cabinet in one guise or another since he became party leader in 2020.
Mr Hermer is a deputy high court judge assigned to the king’s bench division and administrative court and has previously show his support for the rights of Palestinian people as a human rights lawyer.
Last year, he was one of a number of signatories of a letter written to the then Foreign Secretary James Cleverly which stated the ‘Israeli government is led by a coalition of far-right parties whose common goal is the formal annexation of the West Bank and the extension of a one-state reality of unequal rights over more than five million Palestinians under occupation’.
He has also spoken at events for Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights and this year represented Gerry Adams, who was the president of Sinn Féin for a number of years during the Northern Ireland conflict, which ended in 1998.
Hermer already has a track record in working with Keir Starmer’s Labour party, having advised them on the government’s Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill last Summer.
The Bill was introduced with the aim of preventing ‘public bodies when making decisions about procurement and investment from considering a country or territory of origin or other territorial considerations in a way that indicates political or moral disapproval of a foreign state.’
Explaining his opinion on the bill last year, Hermer wrote: ‘This very poorly drafted Bill is likely to have a detrimental impact on the United Kingdom’s ability to protect and promote human rights overseas.
He added the Bill ‘will stifle free speech at home…, will take powers long exercised by local authorities into the hands of the Secretary of State and will likely lead to an array of illogical outcomes’.