RACHEL Reeves’s sister Ellie will now attend Cabinet in a coup for the dynastic wing of the Labour Party.
In Keir Starmer’s Britain it’s not what you know, or even who you know, but who you’re related to.
Ellie Reeves, Reeves the Younger, is the chair of the Labour Party and has been a minister without portfolio since July.
It was announced on Monday that Reeves the Younger would now attend Cabinet, in a move sure to be taken as a victory for those in the Government who believe the running of a country should be modelled on that of a family farm.
What follows is a non-exhaustive list of some of the big names in Starmer’s Cabinet making politics a family affair:
- Catherine Smith, the KC who was made Advocate General for Scotland. She is the daughter of former Labour leader John Smith and Elizabeth Smith, a life peer
- Home Secretary Yvette Cooper: dad, Tony Cooper, was a trade union leader and her husband, Ed Balls, was a Treasury spad then minister
- Energy Secretary Ed Miliband: brother of David Miliband, former foreign secretary, and son of Marxist academic Ralph Miliband
- Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden: wife Marianna McFadden served as Labour’s deputy campaign director during the election
- Health Secretary Wes Streeting: husband Joe Dancey is a failed parliamentary candidate, a former spad, and currently Labour’s director of policy and communications
- Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn: veritable king of the nepo babies, a fourth-generation parliamentarian, son of Tony Benn
- Lisa Nandy: Her grandfather on her mum’s side was a Liberal MP then a peer and the leader of party in the House of Lords
