The softly spoken former Treasury minister who has replaced Wes Streeting has spent most of his parliamentary career toeing the party line, staying out of the headlines and quietly burnishing his credentials as a reliable cabinet colleague.

At the age of 42, James Murray, the Labour and Co-operative MP for Ealing North, now has one of the biggest jobs in government. The new health secretary is one of the least divisive figures in government, and arguably one of the least publicly tested.

He has not run a major Whitehall department before and has never had a particularly visible public media profile, although since Labour came into power his appearances in the media have increased.…