The crisis in Russia will force Keir Starmer to focus on the responsibility of government

The time has come for some serious thinking about what a Labour cabinet would look like

Until now, Keir Starmer’s priority in foreign affairs has been to repair the damage to Labour’s reputation inflicted by Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Nato views. But the turmoil in Russia is a trigger point, forcing the Labour leader to think more deeply about how a government he leads would deal with the world, and what his cabinet might look like.

The crisis in Russia intersects with planning for a shadow cabinet reshuffle, just as events at home make a Labour government seem more likely by the end of next year. Does Starmer really want David Lammy, who opposed the UK’s nuclear deterrent, as foreign secretary?

Foreign policy is one of many issues on which there is now little difference between the prime minister and leader of the opposition. Keir Starmer made support for the Ukrainian people in their war against Vladimir Putin’s invasion central to his drive to persuade the voters that the Labour Party has put the Corbyn years behind it.

When Boris Johnson put himself at the front of Nato democracies in his advocacy of the Ukrainian cause – possibly outdone only by Andrzej Duda of Poland – Starmer ensured that he had solid bipartisan support in parliament.

This was significant, because the Labour Party had only recently put Corbyn forward as a candidate prime minister, and it is deeply uncomfortable for most Labour MPs to think about how a Corbyn government would have responded to Putin’s escalation of the war with his attempt to advance on Kyiv in February last year. Corbyn is a co-founder of the Stop the War Coalition, which blames Nato “imperialism” for provoking the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

They must cringe even harder today, as they imagine how Prime Minister Corbyn might blame the Ukrainians’ desire to join Nato and the EU for sowing division and confusion among Russian forces.

Alongside relief at that humiliation averted, however, Starmer should feel gratitude that he has been given a powerful warning in good time of the need to ensure that a Labour cabinet is ready to face the world from day one.

It seems unlikely that Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, will ever get to sit at the desk in the tennis-court-sized office currently occupied by James Cleverly. Lammy is a fine public speaker, and one of the few on the Labour side who can hold the House of Commons. He is a friend of Starmer’s, and to some extent followed Starmer in bending to the Corbyn leadership for the sake of personal advancement.

But Lammy went further than Starmer ever did by opposing Trident and by nominating Corbyn for the Labour leadership. I am not sure that Lammy was a true believer in either cause: they were positions he was required to adopt to have a chance of securing the Labour nomination for mayor of London, when he came fourth behind Sadiq Khan, Tessa Jowell and Diane Abbott in 2015. All the same, Lammy may seem incongruous as foreign secretary in a Labour government draped with union flags and asserting its pro-Nato national security credentials.

Starmer urgently needs a more reassuring figure from the party’s pre-Corbyn past to act as the equivalent of William Hague in David Cameron’s inexperienced cabinet. Hence the persistent speculation that David Miliband, who was foreign secretary under Gordon Brown, might return. I don’t think it will happen, not least because Starmer wouldn’t want such an obvious rival for the leadership around the cabinet table – the advantage of Hague to Cameron was that Hague already had that T-shirt.

More possible, then, that someone such as John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, might take the Foreign Office. He is not well known outside Westminster, but he is well regarded by his fellow Labour MPs, and was a hard-line advocate of pro-Nato, pro-nuclear and pro-armed-forces policies throughout what might be known as the Corbyn error.

Healey also has the advantage of ministerial experience, having attended cabinet as minister for housing in the Brown government. Such experience will be at a premium if there is a Labour government, although ironically both the shadow ministers who have held full cabinet status, Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper, have endured speculation that they may be demoted.

However, Starmer has delayed his reshuffle – in response to Rishi Sunak creating a science department and an energy department in February – for so long that both Miliband and Cooper have fought back to defend their positions. Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, has loyally supported Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, in scaling back the early ambition of Labour’s plan for the green transition to net zero. Meanwhile Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has supplied Starmer with what he wanted: an immigration policy that is more restrictive than the government’s – preventing foreign workers undercutting British wages in shortage occupations.

Thus, Starmer was happy to take his time in reshaping his team. The threat of a reshuffle had the welcome effect of maintaining shadow cabinet discipline, and of reinforcing his power and that of the ever-stronger Reeves. The shadow chancellor is well advanced in preparing the ground for Labour to inherit an economy in far worse shape than in 1997. “Realism is good,” said an admiring shadow cabinet colleague. “We are in favour of realism – the combination of realism and hope is a powerful one.”

Now hard questions are being asked of Starmer and the rest of the shadow cabinet. As the skies darken, threatening more war and more economic woe, are they ready for the rigours of governing in dangerous times?