The gov.uk website has just published the exchange of letters between Louise Haigh and Keir Starmer in full.

There is already a little bit of early response from political commentators and reports on social media this morning to Louise Haigh leaving government.

Kevin Maguire says “Lou Haigh was doing a great job and was the unofficial leader of the Left in the Cabinet. That’s why opponents wanted to take down ‘Red Lou’”.

Mikey Smith, a deputy political editor at the Mirror, interprets it this way: “Starmer’s reply essentially reads ‘sorry about all this, it’s exceptionally dumb, you’ll be back.’”

Here is how, in the letter announcing her departure, Louise Haigh sets out the events, before she was an MP, that have led to her becoming the first minister to leave Keir Starmer’s government. She wrote:

As you know, in 2013 I was mugged in London. As a 24-year-old woman, the experience was terrifying. In the immediate aftermath, I reported the incident to the police. I gave the police a list of my possessions that I believed had been stolen, including my work phone. Some time later, I discovered that the handset in question was still in my house. I should have immediately informed my employer and not doing so straight away was a mistake.

In its London Playbook morning email, Politico’s Sam Blewett and Bethany Dawson write:

Long-serving frontbencher Haigh – who was seen by many as one of the few remaining standard-bearers of the “soft left” – is the first Cabinet casualty of the new government. Playbook hears Haigh was on a train back from an announcement in Leeds with patchy phone signal last night while firefighting the fallout. At that point her allies said she believed she’d be staying in the post, having “fully disclosed” the “traumatic” incident to Starmer before he appointed her to the shadow cabinet in 2020.

Louise Haigh has been Sheffield Heeley MP since 2015 and held a number of shadow ministerial and shadow cabinet roles before becoming Transport secretary when Labour won the election in July.

Within days of taking office, Haigh told civil servants she planned to “move fast and fix things”, a play on the famous Facebook motto. She said “Growth, net zero, opportunity, women and girls’ safety, health – none of these can be realised without transport as a key enabler.”

In October she became embroiled in a row after describing P&O Ferries as a “rogue operator” just as DP World, its Dubai-based owner, was poised to announce a reported £1bn investment in the UK. Starmer distanced himself from the comments at the time.

In his reply to Louise Haigh’s resignation letter, prime minister Keir Starmer left the door open for her eventual return to government, saying:

Thank you for all you have done to deliver this government’s ambitious transport agenda.

You have made huge strides to take our rail system back into public ownership through the creation of Great British Railways, investing £1bn in our vital bus services and lowering cost for motorists.

I know you still have a huge contribution to make in the future.

Louise Haigh resigns as UK transport secretary after admitting phone offence