To the surprise of very few in Scottish politics, bar apparently himself, Anas Sarwar is stepping down as leader of the Scottish Labour party to take up a peerage and serve as a minister in Andy Burnham’s government. Sarwar had ruled out this prospect himself during the Holyrood election campaign, but now that he’s past the painful result that Labour got in May, he’s off for the new life he said he didn’t want.

Sarwar was, of course, the first senior Labour figure to call for Keir Starmer to step down – he held a press conference back in February telling the then prime minister that ‘the distraction needs to end, and the leadership in Downing Street needs to change’. That demand only set the agenda for a couple of hours, with Starmer managing to rally support from unlikely figures such as Lucy Powell and Wes Streeting, who also provided a distraction that day by publishing his messages with Peter Mandelson. It left Sarwar looking isolated and opportunistic at a fragile time for Scottish Labour.

Burnham is prepared to reward those who’ve enabled him one way or the other

Things are still fragile for the party in Scotland, and Sarwar was unlikely to stay in post for the long term, despite no obvious viable alternative. There were differences of opinion among his colleagues as to whether he was ultimately vindicated by Starmer going or whether that was more like a stopped clock being right twice a day.

Either way, Sarwar moving to work in Burnham’s government underlines one of the themes of this reshuffle, which is that the new prime minister is prepared to reward those who’ve enabled him one way or the other – even if that infuriates the rest of the party in a way that could disable him in the long term.