Yesterday Ed Davey reshuffled his top team ahead of the new parliamentary term and added 5 new roles meaning that 38 out of our 72 MPs now have spokesperson roles.

There aren’t very many huge surprises. Probably the biggest is the replacement of former Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council leader Vikki Slade as housing, communities and local government spokesperson. She was a champion for local government and had experience of handling massive budgets and delivering services and it is hard to understand why she has found herself as a backbench MP. She is replaced at local government by Zoe Franklin, also a former Councillor and ALDC staff member. Gideon Amos, who was housing and planning spokesperson takes the Housing and Communities brief.

Lisa Smart leaves her Home Office brief for something a lot more strategic and wide-ranging. She’ll be shadowing Darren Jones as First Secretary of State. She is a key part of Ed Davey’s inner circle.

She’s replaced at Home Affairs by old friend of this site Max Wilkinson, the MP for Cheltenham. It will be interesting to see how he handles the digital ID debate. While the party has come out unequivocally against Keir Starmer’s expensive and ineffective proposals, there are some who feel that it is possible to introduce a system like Estonia’s – and many others who see the inherent dangers in terms of impact on marginalised groups and civil liberties. And that’s before you get to the safety and competence of Government databases.

We also have Will Forster in a newly created immigration and asylum role and I am confident that he will be very good at articulating a solid, liberal position.

Lisa’s other role of Women and Equalities spokesperson, which she had held since Christine Jardine’s shock sacking in July, goes, surprisingly, to Marie Goldman. While the equality AOs are looking forward to working with her, many people had expected this role to go to NE Hampshire MP Alex Brewer, who is one of our representatives on the Women and Equalities Committee.

Bobby Dean takes Marie’s old brief of Shadow Leader of the Commons. He has really impressed with his ability to understand and connect with voters not in the leafy suburbs we tend to concentrate on too much.

Anna Sabine, who wrote for us recently about the importance of authenticity in politics takes Max’s old brief at Culture, Media and Sport. It will be interesting to see how she continues Max’s campaign to extend the rules about equal coverage of political parties.

James MacCleary moves to Defence and previous defence spokesperson Helen Maguire moves to Primary Care and Cancer Care. Al Pinkerton moves from Northern Ireland to take James’ previous role as Europe spokesperson.

Jess Brown-Fuller moves to the Justice Spokespersonship vacated by Josh Babarinde who stepped back to concentrate on his presidential campaign, telling Ed Davey in a letter that:

I will continue to fight to empower and protect survivors for the rest of my life and look forward to continuing that work from the backbenches.

Caroline Voaden comes in as schools spokesperson. Clive Jones and Sarah Gibson lose their trade and business roles to Josh Reynolds and Sarah Olney who makes a return to the frontbench after her surprise omission last year.

Wendy Chamberlain remains as Chief Whip where she is undeniably putting in a strong performance. However, some of us had hoped to see her return to a more high profile role.  She showed her talent as DWP spokesperson and as a staunch advocate for carers in the last Parliament. Having said that, she is running the Scottish Election Campaign so she has plenty on her plate.

Tim Farron now has Sarah Dyke alongside him as Rural Affairs spokesperson and Charlie Maynard is now in the Treasury Team as shadow Chief Secretary.

The proportion of women in the top team has gone slightly down from 48 to 47%.

The increase in our MPs has obviously increased the number of staff MPs  and the parliamentary team can employ to support them in their work. The first year has seen significant victories, not least Josh Babarinde persuading the Government to introduce a separate offence of domestic abuse, Roz Savage’s work on the Climate and Nature Bill, Max Wilkinson persuading the Government to insist on solar panels on new homes. This is no small feat when the Government has a thumping majority.

I think we will all be excited to see how we build on this in year two.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social