Who is in and who is out of Burnham's Cabinet — and their free speech record

Max Thompson, Campaigns Officer

22 July 2026

Yesterday, Sir Keir Starmer left Downing Street for the last time and the self-styled "King of the North", Andy Burnham, became Britain's 59th Prime Minister — our seventh since 2016.

Keir Starmer presided over one of the most authoritarian governments in living memory, which implemented — or at least tried to in some instances — policies that posed a direct threat to our fundamental right to free speech, along with other rights we have come to take for granted.

Over the last month, the Free Speech Union team have been discussing who is worse for free speech, Andy Burnham or Sir Keir Starmer. The more we spoke about it, the more we realised that Andy Burnham could be as bad as, or indeed worse than, Sir Keir Starmer.

Let's have a run-through of who is in and who is out of the new Government and what their record is on free speech.

Out: The Rt Hon Liz Kendall MP

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has sacked the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Liz Kendall, as he disbanded the department and incorporated it into the Business and Trade Department.

Liz Kendall was the minister responsible for implementing the Orwellian Online Safety Act — a piece of legislation, introduced by the last Conservative government, that has suppressed the free speech rights of British citizens online.

Senior figures in the Trump administration have consistently raised concerns that this UK law also infringes the First Amendment rights of US citizens and unfairly targets US businesses. Last August, the Free Speech Union's Chief Legal Counsel Dr Bryn Harris and Campaigns Officer Max Thompson attended a Parliamentary roundtable hosted by Nigel Farage to discuss the censorious legislative regime with a delegation of the US House Judiciary Committee that had been visiting the UK and Europe to voice concerns over the Online Safety Act and the EU's Digital Services Act.

While serving as Secretary of State, Liz Kendall dragged her feet on the implementation of two vital free speech safeguards contained within the Online Safety Act, which would have forced social media companies to keep up content of democratic importance and journalistic content.

At the beginning of the year, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Lord Young of Acton, and more than fifty senior peers, including former newspaper editors and Cabinet Ministers, wrote to Liz Kendall urging her to implement the safeguards and described the delay as a threat to free speech.

In January this year, Liz Kendall said that she would support the increasingly powerful media regulator, Ofcom, should it decide to block British citizens from accessing Elon Musk's social media platform X. This came in the wake of the row over X's AI chatbot's capacity to generate sexualised deepfakes.

Just a few weeks ago, when answering questions about Starmer's social media ban — based on an existing model in Australia — the then Secretary of State told MPs in the House of Commons that the government of the day was exploring the possibility of a VPN ban. This would have put the UK in the same league as Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

Out: The Rt Hon David Lammy MP

The Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor, and Secretary of State for Justice was dismissed by the new Prime Minister.

During his time as Justice Secretary, David Lammy launched the biggest assault on English liberty — particularly free speech — in more than 800 years with his sinister attempt to curb our ancient right to trial by jury.

The former minister claimed that the only way to reduce the backlog of 80,000 cases in the Crown Court was to slash our right to jury trials, despite offering no credible evidence to support it.

In fact, the Institute for Government published a report at the start of the year that showed that Mr Lammy's reforms would only have saved two per cent of Crown Court time, not the twenty per cent that he promised.

These reforms would have seen 15,000 jury trials that take place on average a year slashed in half, as defendants facing a likely prison sentence of less than three years would have seen their right to elect for a jury trial removed. Despite initially assuring parliamentarians that the plans would not apply retrospectively, the Courts Minister, Sarah Sackman, confirmed that they would, impacting approximately 30,000 people.

Lammy's reforms united MPs from across the political spectrum, judges, lawyers, and victims of crime against them, claiming that they would undermine public trust in the criminal justice system. Indeed, the Lady Chief Justice, Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, made a rare intervention warning that the reforms risked increasing the threat of judges being subjected to physical assault as they become the sole determiner of a defendant's future.

The Free Speech Union's own research has shown that those charged with speech-related offences are almost twice as likely to be found not guilty in a Crown Court with a jury than in a magistrates' court without one.

If David Lammy had his way, his reforms would have seen more people locked up for simply exercising their right to free speech. There have been reports that Andy Burnham wants to axe David Lammy's reforms, describing the right to a jury trial as a "lynchpin of a fair society" during the Makerfield by-election.

The Free Speech Union sincerely hopes that Lammy's authoritarian plan follows him out the door of the Ministry of Justice.

Demoted: The Rt Hon Bridget Phillipson MP

Bridget Phillipson has been stripped of her role as Secretary of State for Education, but will continue to attend Cabinet with the Minister for Women and Equalities brief.

This is a stinging demotion for the controversial Education Secretary, who has been no ally of free speech.

Upon becoming the Education Secretary under Sir Keir Starmer in 2024, one of Phillipson's first acts was to pause the implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 (HEFSA), which had been passed by the previous government.

In response, the Free Speech Union threatened Ms Phillipson with a judicial review and successfully forced a partial U-turn in January 2025. From then on, Ms Phillipson dithered and delayed implementing a complaints scheme.

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act is a vital piece of legislation that places a statutory duty on universities to protect and promote free speech on campus. Thanks to the former Education Secretary's inaction, universities have been able to ignore those responsibilities with impunity.

The Free Speech Union has been at the forefront of supporting students and academics who have faced harassment, abuse, ostracisation from peers, and in some cases being hounded out of their jobs for holding or expressing lawfully held views — namely gender-critical beliefs and a pro-Israel stance.

Although Phillipson finally announced in April that a complaints scheme would be introduced for academics, university staff, and visiting speakers, students — unlike under the original legislation — will not have access to it.

It has also been revealed that Bridget Phillipson spent more than £500,000 of taxpayers' money trying to water down vital free speech protections on university campuses.

Remain: The Rt Hon Lisa Nandy MP

The Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, Lisa Nandy, has remained in post. However, with the dissolution of the Science, Innovation and Technology Department, Nandy has gained the digital brief.

Nandy recently flounced off X, citing the increase in abuse, misinformation, and disinformation. In a final post before she departed the platform — taking her department with her — Ms Nandy said: "I've decided to leave this platform and my Department will too. A platform originally designed for free speech and expression now favours abuse and misinformation over meaningful debate. It isn't healthy for our democracy or our communities and I don't want to support it."

But Lisa Nandy has never shown herself to be a huge lover of our fundamental right to free speech. After all, she served in the Starmer Government and never spoke out against all manner of assaults on free speech and democracy — including plans to curb our right to trial by jury, or when Keir Starmer and then Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary Steve Reed attempted to cancel a string of local elections earlier this year.

Nandy appeared in the House of Commons last month to set out the Government's plans under its new green paper, Watch This Space. Under these plans, the Government intends to denote what it deems to be a "trustworthy" news source — namely public broadcasters such as the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 — and force social media companies to prioritise its promotion above all others.

This Orwellian plan has sparked outrage with senior US congressmen, including a close ally of President Trump and the chairman of the US House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan. Mr Jordan recently wrote to Ms Nandy to warn that her department's proposals "would serve as a major threat" to online speech and "infringe on the rights of American companies."

Another thing that should concern us is Lisa Nandy's proximity to our new Prime Minister, who is also the MP for the neighbouring constituency to hers. Andy Burnham has long been a strong advocate for greater state regulation of Britain's free press and was joined on the campaign trail in the Makerfield by-election by Love Actually's own Prime Minister and press regulation campaigner Hugh Grant.

While serving as Shadow Home Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn, Mr Burnham called the second part of the Leveson Inquiry "non-negotiable". In his last stint in Parliament, Mr Burnham was also a proponent of Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, legislation designed to force news publishers to join a state-backed regulator.

As the Secretary of State responsible for the media, Lisa Nandy would be tasked with Burnham's potential mission of collaring Britain's free press.

Promoted: The Rt Hon Lucy Powell MP

The Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and close ally of Andy Burnham has been promoted to a full member of the Cabinet as Education Secretary. Ms Powell played a key role in supporting her old friend in his quest for Number 10.

In a recent interview, Ms Powell indicated that she wants to impose strict new legal duties on online platforms like Facebook and X, similar to the impartiality rules broadcasters face during elections. This is a move that would, in essence, censor social media platforms — where a growing number of people receive their news — during election periods and stifle open political debate online.

Powell identified the Representation of the People Bill as the perfect legislative vehicle to commandeer to enact her censorious plans. This is a Bill that the Free Speech Union pinpointed as one to watch due to all the nasty surprises that it could hold during the King's Speech. The Bill, which also includes measures to give sixteen-year-olds the vote, was delayed at the last minute before it was due to have its final stages in the House of Commons, to allow the new Burnham Government to rewrite it.

And greeting Mr Burnham on the steps of Downing Street…

As Andy Burnham arrived on Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister, he was greeted by friends, family, and supporters. Amongst the crowd was Josh Simons, the former Member of Parliament for Makerfield and Cabinet Office Minister, who resigned to allow Mr Burnham a pathway back to Westminster.

Simons is the former head of Labour Together. This think tank, which was at the heart of the Starmer project, sought to marginalise media outlets that challenged its political agenda, rather than allowing people to access a broad range of viewpoints and reach their own conclusions.

In a recent briefing, the Free Speech Union exposed Labour's Misinformation Mafia. The Free Speech Union's Director of Policy and Research also conducted two interviews with former Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and investigative journalist Paul Holden to uncover the censorious ambitions of some of the people at the very heart of the Starmer and Burnham operations.