Angela Rayner MP resigns as Deputy Prime Minister
Some Westminster watchers are fond of saying things like ‘there’s no-one quite like Angela’. When they do so, they are telling on themselves.
In truth there are millions of people like Angela Rayner. Brought up in a chaotic home, written off in school despite their obvious intelligence, looked down upon for establishing their entry into adult life through a pregnancy rather than a degree. Her success in breaking out of the life our society handed her, and into the highest political office, is unusual. But that is both a tribute to her talents and self-belief and something of a rebuke to our pretensions to meritocracy.
It is not for a political note like this to linger on the ins and outs of the scandal that sees Rayner resign as Secretary of State for Communities, Housing and Local Government, Deputy Labour Leader and Deputy Prime Minister but rather to consider the political implications of what has happened.
Firstly, whilst some in Starmer’s team may be foolish enough to see this as some kind of political scalping, this is not good news for the Prime Minister. Not only has this story wiped his ‘reset’ from collective attention and memory (not that it was ever likely to set the world on fire) the loss of his Deputy PM leaves Starmer without any standard-bearer on the soft left of his party. It was Angela that was the champion workers’ rights, Angela who pursued social housing as a hefty part of the new builds we need, Angela who kept the red(ish) flag flying here. And it was Angela that saved the Prime Minister from total defeat on welfare - reassuring true Labour waverers that it wasn’t quite as bad as all that. Minus Angela, Starmer’s already tenuous grasp of his own backbenchers - of what they feel and think and why they’re in this awful job in the first place - is further weakened. As is his capacity to persuade them.
And it is bad news, too, for some of those more zealous reformists who might not always have seen themselves as natural allies of Rayner. The wonks and backbenchers who just want us to ‘build, baby, build’ and who are sick of seeing regulators and busy-bodies strangle housing at birth. Because one quality of genuinely working class leftism is a pleasing impatience with the overcomplication of the, by rights, bloody obvious. Not enough houses? Why don’t we try building some?
Finally, this limits Starmer’s options when it comes to the ever-looming reshuffle - which now looks destined for later today.
Ministers he might once have been tempted to despatch he may now need to keep, lacking as he does the elbow room to eviscerate others of the soft left or who share with Rayner some characteristics of politics or personality he lacks.
The news also has more complicated implications on the process by which to replace Rayner as Deputy Party leader - or indeed abolish her role altogether - with Rayner being originally elected by members in 2020, not appointed.
We will be keeping tabs on the process to find a replacement as Deputy Leader (or indeed abolish the role) - current rules state a caretaker can be appointed by Cabinet but only until Labour Party Conference. As this is only a few weeks away and No10 will be keen to avoid an open contest (and currently it’s the least of their worries) - it looks like a rule change would be needed to avoid a massive and unnecessary distraction to getting the job of Government done. Some are mooting removing the role all together or finding a way to push it into the long grass, perhaps after the locals next May.