Andy Burnham has formed his first cabinet as Prime Minister, and while the new team marks a genuine milestone for gender representation, questions are already being raised about whether the broader makeup of his top table really signals the change he promised.
For the first time in British political history, women hold exactly half of all cabinet seats. That is a landmark moment, no matter how you look at it. Previous governments have edged closer to parity over the years, but none have actually reached it at cabinet level until now. Burnham, who built much of his political identity around working class roots and northern England, has at least delivered on that particular front.
But dig a little deeper and the picture gets more complicated.
Oxbridge still has a firm grip on the corridors of power. A significant chunk of Burnham’s senior ministers studied at either Oxford or Cambridge, continuing a pattern that has defined British cabinets for decades regardless of which party is in charge. Critics have long argued that the Oxbridge pipeline produces a political class that is disconnected from ordinary life, and those critics will find plenty of ammunition in the new cabinet’s educational background.
On race and ethnicity, the cabinet is more diverse than several of its predecessors, though campaigners and commentators have pointed out there is still a long way to go before the top table properly reflects the population it governs. The number of ministers from ethnic minority backgrounds has increased compared to some previous governments, but representation at the very senior levels remains thin.
The class question is perhaps the most loaded one for a politician like Burnham. He has spent years positioning himself as the anti-establishment candidate, the man from Leigh who understood what life was like outside the Westminster bubble. Some of his cabinet picks reinforce that narrative. Others, particularly those with private school educations or careers spent almost entirely inside politics, sit a little awkwardly alongside it.
Age is another factor worth noting. The cabinet skews slightly younger than Keir Starmer’s final lineup, which some see as a deliberate attempt to inject fresh energy into a government that struggled in its later years. Whether younger ministers translates into fresher ideas remains to be seen.
The reshuffle itself was always going to generate headlines beyond the demographics. Several figures closely associated with Starmer were moved out, either demoted or removed from cabinet altogether. Burnham’s allies have been clear that the new Prime Minister wanted his own people around him, which is hardly unusual, but the scale of the clearout surprised some observers.
What the charts and numbers cannot fully capture is how this cabinet will actually govern. Demographic diversity matters, and the gender milestone is genuinely significant, but voters tend to judge governments on decisions rather than statistics. Burnham came to power promising to rebuild trust after a difficult final period for Labour under Starmer, and the composition of his team will only take him so far.
The Oxbridge dominance, in particular, is likely to become a recurring talking point. For a Prime Minister who has staked so much on his outsider credentials, having a cabinet stuffed with graduates from two of the most elite universities in the world creates an obvious tension. Burnham’s supporters will argue that educational background does not determine political values. His critics will argue it usually does.
For now, the cabinet is new, the government is new, and the country is watching to see whether the makeup of Burnham’s top team translates into policies that feel different from what came before. The 50 percent figure for women is a start. The rest is still to be proven.