Mahmood may be Labour's key weapon against Reform

There are some cabinet ministers whose rise the Westminster circus sees coming a mile off.

- SONIA SODHA

Shabana Mahmood’s ascent to home secretary has been a quiet one, unaccompanied by commentator fanfare. Perhaps it’s because the first Muslim woman to hold one of the great offices of state has been underestimated by the media; perhaps it’s more a product of the fact she's been less focused on briefing the press on her ambitions than some of her colleagues. But now she's ended up in one of the most strategically important jobs for this government, she's firmly placed herself in the “one to watch” category.

Mahmood's rise has been steady as opposed to breakneck. Elected to represent her home constituency of Birmingham Ladywood in 2010, she held a range of shadow ministerial positions under Ed Miliband, from prisons, to higher education, to shadow financial secretary. Like many of the most senior members of the cabinet - but unlike her boss Keir Starmer - she declined to serve under Jeremy Corbyn, and returned to the backbenches in 2015. Starmer promoted her to national campaign coordinator after he was elected leader, a party-facing role, then, in 2023, to shadow justice secretary.

It is a sign of how trusted she is by No 10 that she was elevated to the Home Office a little over a year after Labour's election win, where it has been an intense first month for the home secretary, spent launching eye-catching policies on immigration and asylum, and responding to the antisemitic terrorist attack in Manchester that cost two British Jews their lives.

That trust is partly a product of her close relationship with Starmer's chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, which developed when the two worked together in opposition on Labour's campaign strategy, but it goes beyond that. Mahmood is seen as highly competent; during her time as campaign chief, she is credited with helping to achieve the Batley and Spen by-election win in opposition that helped settle growing nerves in the party in the early days of Starmer's leadership.