She comes from think tank land, where she had a top job at the cost-of-living-focused Resolution Foundation, and has won praise for leading Labour\u2019s outreach to business. The policy expert gets plenty of praise from colleagues, but others fear she may be \u201cindecisive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jill Cuthbertson<\/strong><\/p>\n Cuthbertson \u2014 the other half of the acting-up deputy chief of staff duo \u2014\u00a0is seen as having a deeper understanding of the political front, having worked with former Labour leaders Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband. <\/p>\n Cuthbertson is due some extended leave in the coming months, but one option under discussion is the job-share being made permanent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amy Richards<\/strong><\/p>\n A former long-time adviser to Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, the PM brought Richards into No.10 to bolster his operation\u2019s communications with backbenchers. <\/p>\n The political director is spoken of highly among special advisers who don\u2019t seem to lay any blame with her for the Parliamentary Labour Party\u2019s current mood.\u00a0<\/p>\n Long shots \u2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n Outside chancers being mentioned are the PM\u2019s chief secretary Darren Jones<\/strong>, comms boss Tim Allan<\/strong>, Starmer biographer Tom Baldwin, <\/strong>National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell<\/strong> (once Tony Blair\u2019s chief of staff, although himself facing questions over the Mandelson appointment) and top Rachel Reeves\u2019 adviser Ben Nunn.<\/strong><\/p>\n POLITICO London Playbook is throwing another name out there for kicks: ex-chief of staff Sue Gray<\/strong>, who resigned in October 2024 after losing a power battle with McSweeney \u2026 because who doesn\u2019t love a comeback?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She comes from think tank land, where she had a top job at the cost-of-living-focused Resolution Foundation, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":752323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,2001,6216,17790,33,393,90439,4884,807,1144,28300,45,712,811,2824,27005,16,15,1764,5113],"class_list":["post-752322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","category-uk","category-united-kingdom","tag-britain","tag-communications","tag-darren-jones","tag-ed-miliband","tag-elections","tag-england","tag-gordon-brown","tag-great-britain","tag-keir-starmer","tag-northern-ireland","tag-peter-mandelson","tag-playbook","tag-scotland","tag-security","tag-tanks","tag-tony-blair","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales","tag-yvette-cooper"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116039658050587151","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}