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Andy Burnham has awarded a peerage and a government job to a senior Labour figure who called on Keir Starmer to resign.
In a major shock, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar is quitting Holyrood to enter the House of Lords.
He will also become a minister at the revamped Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade.
Sarwar’s elevation comes despite the fact he led Scottish Labour to a disastrous result at the Holyrood elections on May 7.
The party came a distant second to Labour, and saw their number of MSPs slump from 20 to just 17.
However, Sarwar did break ranks in February to call on Starmer to resign as prime minister in the wake of the Peter Mandelson scandal.
The disgraced former UK ambassador to Washington is accused of passing market sensitive information to the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein when he was business secretary between 2008 and 2010.
Sarwar said: “The distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change.
“It is so obvious that we desperately need change in Scotland and in three months time the opportunity to get rid of a failing SNP government is one that is too important to be missed.
“We cannot allow the failures at the heart of Downing Street to mean the failures continue here in Scotland, because the election in May is not without consequence for the lives of Scots.”
Despite speculation that cabinet ministers were set to quit, Starmer managed to see off the rebellion to stay in office until he stood down last week.
Burnham last week insisted he would end “factionalism” in the Labour Party.
However, on Monday he axed a host of Starmer loyalists while appointing a number of his own supporters to his cabinet within hours of taking over as prime minister.
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