How is Lisa Nandy still in her job?

Keir Starmer’s forced Cabinet reshuffle, in the wake of Angela Rayner’s resignation, was so thorough that it was much quicker to count the ministers still in the same post at the end of the day than those who’d moved – reportedly because it was a planned move that had been abandoned or delayed as too risky, until Rayner’s exit forced a ministerial rethink anyway.

The decision to keep Rachel Reeves as chancellor, while contentious, was easily explained: her tears a few months before had been enough to spook the markets and spike UK debt prices, so her firing could cause an economic crisis. Rumours suggest Number 10 tried and failed to move Ed Miliband, who stood his ground. Wes Streeting and Bridget Phillipson kept health and education, respectively, which was hardly a surprise as both are seen as Starmer loyalists.

No one, though, can come up with a convincing explanation as to why Lisa Nandy is still in her job as culture secretary. DCMS civil servants, Labour backbenchers and commentators alike are all mystified – the one safe bet on a Starmer reshuffle was that she would be out.

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Nandy, once a rising star and a leadership candidate, has almost universally been seen as a disappointment in DCMS. She has vocally criticised the BBC, including calling for the director-general to resign over its Glastonbury coverage, but done nothing to tackle its board. She has said almost nothing about online hate from Elon Musk’s X. She’s widely criticised as being bored of her brief and doing the minimum.

And yet Keir Starmer and Number 10 have decided that she will stay there. Labour insiders offer up three explanations. One, Number 10 is so scared of internal dissent it won’t let even a much-diminished rival onto the backbenches. Two, Nandy might be the only person who seems as miserable in her job as Starmer, which is reassuring.

The third is a bit of both: Nandy is a potential trouble-maker, but has done nothing where she is, meaning – one Labour staffer suggests – that she might be the first problematic MP to be punished by being kept in the Cabinet.