Louise Haigh, Secretary of State for Transport, and MP for Sheffield Heeley may be facing a sacking from the Cabinet in a potential post-Budget reshuffle.

Earlier this month, she referred to P&O ferries as a “rogue operator” in an official press release. In an interview with ITV, she doubled down on her comments.

Following her comments, P&O’s parent company , DP World, threatened to withdraw £1bn of investment, that had been set to turn their London Gateway facility in Essex into Britain’s largest port.

Despite the fact that her comments echoed what Keir Starmer had said about the company throughout his time in opposition, following the company’s 2022 decision to dismiss hundreds of workers, only to shortly after replace them with lower-paid agency staff, the Prime Minister and a number of her cabinet colleagues rebuked what she said and Keir Starmer insisted that her words did not reflect the government’s position.

A senior minister told The Sun: “If there was a reshuffle tomorrow I think she would be gone.
“No 10 cares a lot about messaging, so when you get the messaging wrong you have messed up. She is at risk.”

It was also reported by The Sun last month that she had made an unauthorised pay offer to rail unions.

Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, who is chairman of the public accounts committee, told the Daily Mail: “This is really incompetent and very extraordinary. If we go on like this, it’ll give the country a really bad international reputation and we will have much more difficulty in encouraging investment into this country, which is absolutely vital if we’re going to grow our economy.

“Should she go? That’s up to the Prime Minister. He could get rid of her if he wanted.”

Louise Haigh was Shadow Transport Secretary for three years before Labour won the general election. If she were to be dismissed, her wide-ranging transport reforms would likely be disrupted.

Featured images via @steelcity snaps on X and House of Commons