KEIR STARMER’S on-off reshuffle of his cabinet has left a trail of confusion.

The appointment of the neo-Blairite (and near neoliberal) Rachel Reeves as shadow chancellor over the mildly social democratic Anneliese Dodds is confirmation, if any was needed, that a Labour Party headed by Starmer is not likely to present a challenge to what, until very recently, was established orthodoxy in economics.

With this appointment, Starmer — who owes his position as leader to the cynical pretence that he would continue with the radical policy platforms that emerged under Jeremy Corbyn — now makes it clear that all policy is now subordinate to austerity economics and fiscal orthodoxy.

The first mystery is why the leadership thinking is so uncreative on economic policy. Are they unaware of the shifting winds of economic policy-making where one decisive tendency in ruling-class thought — both here and in the US — sees the need for a state-funded programme of capitalist stabilisation rather than a retrenchment on the failed model of the past?

Much of the media commentary has reflected on Starmer’s maladroit manoeuvres during this reshuffle; thus the second mystery is what on Earth he thinks he is doing.

It is true that reshuffles are routine, but they are usually conducted with a sharp eye to parliamentary arithmetic and the overdeveloped sensitivities of the parliamentary party.

This is especially important when, like present-day Labour in Parliament, there is little in the way of a common ideology or an overarching political mission to underpin political cohesion. Ambition and the prospects of preferment produce all manner of perverse pressures.

With Starmer in scheming seclusion with a coterie of officials who owe their position exclusively to his patronage, and while his emissary to the outside world — and the man charged with signing off on public statements — is Lord Mandelson, we can expect little innovative thinking.

This is not playing well with MPs and neither is his sacking of Nick Brown as chief whip. Contrast the exceedingly collegiate way in which Corbyn worked  — with a saintly forbearance even towards people who had schemed against him and his mandate — with Starmer’s blundering.

We should not make too much of the supposed “sacking” of Angela Rayner. Starmer needs her as much now as he did in his mendacious leadership pitch; while she, who spurned the left with her enthusiastic endorsement of the anti-semitism libel against Corbyn and pledges to purge “thousands and thousands” of members, needs him no less.

No future leadership bid by Rayner can succeed without the right-wing figures still gathered around Starmer; and if she was minded to appeal to her left for support, she would find that her record since becoming deputy leader has shredded her appeal except to those with the shortest memories.

As party chair and campaign co-ordinator she had little room for any individual action and, where she had authority, she exercised it exclusively in the interests of the new emperor.

The errors of omission and commission during the election campaign were not of her exclusive making and Starmer makes a fool of himself in volunteering to take responsibility for failure and then dumping it on her.

This takes us to another mystery. Labour suffered reverses in this round of elections, and there is no virtue in making light of them. What is surprising is that Starmer has not made much of such successes as Labour did achieve.

Starmer has made it crystal clear that he has no taste for working-class politics or in challenging power and wealth. But while he is proving to be not very good at orthodox parliamentary politics, he does seems intent on proving himself a reliable guardian of the status quo.