Shadow Minister for Music and Tourism Barbara Keeley has announced that she will not be seeking re-election on July 4th when the U.K. votes in the long-awaited General Election. The Labour Party MP for Worsley & Eccles South near Manchester currently sits as one of the Shadow Cabinet Ministers within the Department of Culture, Media & Sport, under the leadership of Shadow Secretary of State Thangam Debbonaire (Labour, Bristol West).
In a statement posted to social media earlier today, Keeley said: “It’s been an honour and a privilege to represent the people of Worsley and Eccles South in Parliament since 2010 and before that the people of Worsley from 2005 to 2010. I have now taken the very difficult decision that I will stand down as the candidate for my party in the General Election on July 4th”. She continued: “Thinking about the demands of the campaign, including supporting Labour colleagues in battleground seats, has made me realise that now is the time to step aside for a new Labour candidate for the constituency…In my Shadow Culture roles I have battled to support our world-class BBC orchestras, to save BBC Singers from being axed and on the pressing need to improve music education”.
First being elected in 2005, to the constituency then known as Worsley, Keeley has been elected to the House of Commons continuously since and has held both Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet positions in her career, including Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (2009-2010), Shadow Minister for Older People, Social Care and Carers (2015-2016) and Shadow Treasury Minister (2015), until she resigned from Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet following the EU referendum of 2016.
Upon Corbyn’s re-election as Leader of the Labour Party, she was made Shadow Minister for Mental Health and Social Care until Keir Starmer became leader, at which point she was moved to the backbenches. In 2022, she was made Shadow Minister of Arts and Civil Society, a position she held until September 2023, when she was reshuffled to hold the brief of Minister for Music and Tourism, which she held up until the dissolution of Parliament last week. She also sat on the Speaker’s Advisory Committee for Works of Art from 2020.
With MPs currently out campaigning for the upcoming General Election, we now have confirmation that regardless of the outcome, we will be seeing at least one new face on the Labour Party frontbench for the Department of Culture, Media & Sport. As Barbara Keeley leaves the House of Commons to focus on recovering from recent surgery, we now await her successor, and whether this will be in her old Shadow Cabinet brief, or as a Minister should her party emerge victorious.
The 2024 U.K. General Election will take place on July 4th
