What can you do with a Minister Without Portfolio? Quite a lot, actually.

Street signs marking Downing Street and Whitehall, set against the formal architecture of UK government buildings. A visual nod to the heart of executive power and the symbolic seat occupied by ministers without formal portfolios.

A Cabinet seat without a department

One of the most flexible posts in British government is also one of its most politically revealing. The Minister without Portfolio holds Cabinet rank without departmental responsibility,  a red box, a seat at the table, and a remit shaped not by statute but by strategy. Used effectively, the role is a tool of political choreography: helping a Prime Minister balance internal factions, respond to fast-moving crises, or anchor key personnel at the heart of government. The absence of a defined portfolio is not a weakness but a feature, giving Downing Street a versatile lever of influence.

The Turley appointment

Anna Turley’s appointment to the role in September 2025, alongside her elevation to Chair of the Labour Party, is a notable signal of the Prime Minister’s evolving political operation. A former civil servant, special adviser turned MP, charity leader, and lobbyist, Turley brings both institutional experience and campaign credibility. Her return to Parliament in 2024, after losing her seat in 2019 under Corbyn, symbolises Labour’s post-2019 repositioning, her rapid promotion suggesting strategic intent. She is now the fourth person to serve as Party Chair under Starmer, following Angela Rayner, Anneliese Dodds, and Ellie Reeves, a churn rate that reflects both the volatility and the high stakes of managing Labour’s internal machine.

Lord Alok Sharma speaks at the COP26 climate summit, seated behind a UN Climate Change podium.

In practical terms, Turley’s role remains to be defined but her proximity to Starmer and dual function at the intersection of party and government points to a broader repositioning ahead of conference season. As with previous holders of the post from Lord Alok Sharma’s climate diplomacy at COP26 to figures tasked with Brexit strategy or constitutional reform, the Minister without Portfolio often serves as a kind of Cabinet floater: adaptable, strategic, and politically embedded. It is a position less about administration than alignment and the type of appointment that says as much about a Prime Minister’s priorities as it does about the appointee’s own portfolio.

The Minister without Portfolio has long functioned as a constitutional wildcard, a Cabinet seat without departmental command, offering Prime Ministers a flexible instrument for balancing power, rewarding loyalty, or signalling intent. It is a role defined not by what it manages, but by what it makes possible: a floating brief deployed to shore up political capital or reinforce strategic messaging. Under Sir Keir Starmer, that role has now been handed to Anna Turley, whose appointment coincides not only with a Cabinet reshuffle, but with a critical period of internal Labour Party politics.

From Thatcher to Starmer

Historically, Ministers without Portfolio have played varied and often politically sensitive roles, shaped more by the needs of the Prime Minister than by any formal constitutional mandate.  The role has been used to reward loyalty, manage internal party tensions, coordinate major policy initiatives, and provide senior Cabinet status to individuals operating outside traditional departmental frameworks. David Young (Baron Young of Graffham) was appointed as Minister without Portfolio by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, tasked with advising on unemployment policy and supporting wider economic messaging. He later became a key electoral strategist, playing a central role in planning the 1987 general election. Young was emblematic of Thatcher’s desire to bring business acumen into Cabinet politics, a non-traditional political actor turned fixer, trusted with party management and economic narrative-setting.

Under John Major, the position was used to bolster political leadership in the Conservative Party. Jeremy Hanley and Brian Mawhinney served as Party Chair while holding the Minister without Portfolio title, tasked with internal party discipline and media handling during a period of mounting backbench rebellion. Their presence in Cabinet allowed Major to keep a grip on party operations without creating new departmental turf wars.

New Labour and the rise of the political operator

Tony Blair reimagined the role to blend status and strategic oversight. In 1997, Peter Mandelson became Minister without Portfolio with responsibility for the Millennium Dome project, a highly symbolic role reflecting New Labour’s modernising ambitions. Blair used the position to cement Mandelson’s influence without confining him to a traditional Whitehall department. Later, the role evolved into Chair of the Labour Party, held successively by Charles Clarke, John Reid, Ian McCartney, and Hazel Blears combining political messaging, campaign planning, and internal discipline within the Cabinet framework. The role fell out of formal use under Gordon Brown, but returned under David Cameron, who used it to balance both coalition sensitivities and intra-party politics. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, as Minister without Portfolio and Co-Chair of the Conservative Party, was responsible for community engagement and interfaith relations becoming the first Muslim woman in Cabinet. Her appointment reflected both representational politics and strategic outreach beyond the Conservative base.

Grant Shapps, who succeeded Warsi, held the role through the 2015 General Election campaign. Simultaneously, Ken Clarke, though often styled with alternate titles, operated as a senior Cabinet-level troubleshooter and anti-corruption champion,  a “Minister without Portfolio” in all but name. John Hayes, appointed in 2013, served as the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Adviser, acting as a conduit between Cameron and restless backbenchers over issues including Europe and Lords reform.

Coalition Fixers and Tory Chairs

Under Theresa May, the role was briefly dormant before being revived as a vehicle for Party Chairs a pattern continued under Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak. Figures such as Brandon Lewis, Sir James Cleverly, Amanda Milling, Sir Oliver Dowden, Sir Jake Berry, Nadhim Zahawi, and Greg Hands used the position to manage campaign strategy, discipline, and external party communications.

The Mandelson case study

Not all appointments have been straightforward. Mandelson’s own arc typifies the volatile nature of the role from Blair’s strategic operator to Gordon Brown’s political lifeline, returning as Business Secretary and First Secretary of State during the financial crisis. His Cabinet status in 2008 allowed him to coordinate cross-government responses, shape industrial policy, and reassert authority over a fractious party. Yet his career was repeatedly derailed by scandal most recently, his dismissal as UK Ambassador to the US by Starmer, after undisclosed links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein emerged. Once dubbed the "Trump whisperer" and valued for his elite networks, Mandelson’s final fall underscores the risks of entrusting high-status but loosely-defined roles to politically combustible figures.

Functionally, the title of Minister without Portfolio has also overlapped with other Cabinet-adjacent roles. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Lord Privy Seal, and Paymaster General have often been used as interchangeable titles for similar purposes  allowing Prime Ministers to place trusted allies in cross-departmental coordination roles or grant Cabinet status to political fixers, envoys, or party figures. Ken Clarke again typifies this tradition: officially styled as Minister without Portfolio in 2014 but operating as a Cabinet elder with latitude to speak across government policy. In his memoirs, Clarke revealed how Cameron’s No.10 sought to curtail his media appearances, a reflection of tensions between the role’s status and the control culture of modern political communications.

Anna Turley’s appointment, therefore, is less a reshuffle afterthought than a calculated political signal. Elevating her to Cabinet rank, particularly in the absence of a fixed policy brief, embeds a trusted ally close to the centre while reinforcing Starmer’s message of professionalised, delivery-focused governance. But timing matters. Turley’s promotion arrives just as the Labour Party prepares to elect a new Deputy Leader following Angela Rayner’s departure. The contest will sharpen questions of factional alignment, party identity, and who ultimately sets the tone of Starmerism in its next phase. As Party Chair and Minister without Portfolio, Turley will now occupy a delicate space: not a candidate, but a referee; not neutral, but pivotal. Her dual role gives her influence over the party machine at a time when it must prove it can govern without being consumed by its own internal processes.

Why the role still matters

Though undefined in statute, the Minister without Portfolio has long served as a constitutional wildcard, a seat at the Cabinet table not defined by delivery, but by access, alignment, and authority. From Thatcher’s election architects to Blair’s strategic operators and Cameron’s coalition fixers, the role has endured precisely because it resists formalisation. Its survival across governments reflects not bureaucratic inertia, but political necessity: a Prime Minister’s tool to reward loyalty, absorb risk, and signal control. 

In elevating Anna Turley, Sir Keir Starmer is drawing on that same playbook but in a different era, under a different kind of pressure. For those tracking the shape of this government and the evolution of Labour’s internal power structures, it’s not just who’s in the room that matters it’s who’s there without a brief and what that tells us about what comes next. 

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