Pension Minister Torsten Bell
Well the name of the Pension Minister , Torsten Bell has not been mentioned in the reshuffle which is just as well. His boss has however changed and so has a lot of the Labour Cabinet , you can read about the glamour jobs in the mainstream press but what about the DWP?
Pat McFadden has replaced Liz Kendall as work and pensions secretary, but will also take over the skills brief that had previously been part of the Department for Education.
As the party’s national campaign co-ordinator McFadden was one of the masterminds behind Labour’s historic 2024 election victory, constantly stressing the need for message discipline ahead of the election and warning activists and MPs alike to ignore the opinion polls.
A former adviser to Sir Tony Blair, the Glasgow-born MP has represented the Wolverhampton South East constituency since 2005, serving as a business minister under Gordon Brown and in several shadow ministerial roles since then.
Before the latest move, McFadden was chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, responsible for running the Cabinet Office – the department that supports the prime minister and co-ordinates the government’s policies to deliver its agenda.
This is me and from correspondents-on-sea (more than one home of Raynor).
The expectation is that McFadden will batten down a few hatches and not let more embarrassing defeats happen for a Labour Government on welfare issues.
I expect him to do a Duncan Smith and hide from pensions.He can even rely on Timms to ask the big issue questions when ministers meet.He has more than enough on everything else.
Behind all this is the strong hand of a Labour party that trusts Torsten Bell who is doing a remarkably well of keeping his head down and his nose clean while organising things in the Treasury for a budget on November 26th
Here is the man who has taken charge and who clearly new what was happening well before it did (for Raynor). Morgan McSweeney is (IMO) making Labour into a third party that wants what used to be called the working class and now considered on this blog “people who work”.
Who is this mysterious person who is not Pat McFadden but rather like him? Here he is – looking worryingly like John in Emmerdale Farm.
Now is a good time for our Pension Minister to be hard at it , putting in the hard yards ahead of Labour’s Conferences and the UK’s budget in the next three months.
He has a budget, a Bill and before he makes a move upwards he needs two Acts to happen.
We do at last have a Pension Minister who is going somewhere with his career . I have been saying for the most of 2025, we will look back when he has gone and regret it if the big measures in the Pension Schemes Bill, don’t get enacted in the first quarter of 2026, what happens on November 26th is a precursor for pension’s 2026 and beyond.
There is a lot of politics he is well out of. That’s the tough job for those who manage Labour’s affairs.
McSweeney before Starmer; McSweeney is not John in Emmerdale Farm