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shadow cabinet
noun
: a group of leaders of a parliamentary opposition who constitute the probable membership of the cabinet when their party is returned to power
Examples of shadow cabinet in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Keir Starmer, Labour leader, received a number of frontbench resignations from members of Parliament today who held positions in the opposition's shadow cabinet.
—NBC News, 15 Nov. 2023
Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove and senior members of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet were among those at the Ditchley Park retreat in Oxfordshire.
—Eddie Spence, Bloomberg.com, 12 Feb. 2023
Rob Ford, a politics expert at the University of Manchester, drew parallels to 2016 when, following the Brexit vote, the then leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, suffered mass resignations from his shadow cabinet in an attempt to oust the Labour leader.
—Karla Adam, Washington Post, 6 July 2022
As if to illustrate the point, a succession of high-profile MPs announced positive tests on Tuesday, including Labour shadow cabinet members Rachel Reeves, Bridget Phillipson and Jim McMahon, and Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey.
—Alex Morales, Bloomberg.com, 14 Dec. 2021
Members of its shadow cabinet are in hiding inside Myanmar and in exile.
—Grant Peck, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 Sep. 2021
Labour’s Rachel Reeves, the shadow cabinet office minister, said in a statement.
—Joe Mayes, Bloomberg.com, 21 Oct. 2020
Labour shadow cabinet member David Lammy told the BBC that the government needs to ensure its track and trace testing regime is in order by then to ensure students can travel across the country.
—Alex Morales, Bloomberg.com, 27 Sep. 2020
The shadow cabinet is used to refer to the senior group of opposition MPs who take on policy areas that correspond to the government’s cabinet.
—Fox News, 25 June 2020
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'shadow cabinet.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
First Known Use
1906, in the meaning defined above
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Cite this Entry
“Shadow cabinet.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shadow%20cabinet. Accessed 13 Jun. 2024.
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