Angela Rayner's arguments will chime with many disaffected Labour voters: Jayne Dowle
If Angela Rayner really is on her way back, what has she learned from her exile? That you can devise all the clever policies you like, but you can’t beat political instinct.
Comparisons stop here, but like former Conservative PM Boris Johnson, Rayner knows that people want politicians they can believe in, who they trust to have their interests at heart, and who break a few rules sometimes.
Rayner’s supporters would hope that she has also learned that if you’re a senior politician you must never allow yourself to be tripped up on a technicality – such as not paying the correct level of tax on your second home.
But still, whilst Rayner has her faults, you can’t doubt that she sincerely believes in the Labour party and staunch left-leaning values. For all his protestations and many mentions of his toolmaker father, many feel that the same cannot be said of Sir Keir Starmer.
Nature abhors a vacuum; whilst we look on and wonder what the PM really does believe in at all, in strides his former second-in-command to deliver some home truths.
Rayner’s return to the backbenches has given the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne time to think and observe; a far more dangerous position for Sir Keir Starmer than the one of loyal deputy Prime Minister she vacated in September.
Now hoping to put last autumn’s HMRC woes behind her, Rayner addressed a meeting of the Labour Mainstream activists’ group in a Westminster pub last week at which she made no secret of her frustration with Starmer’s premiership – although she was careful not to actually name him.
Mainstream says it wants "a popular Left with heart and vision". Many in the group and wider across the Labour movement are highly dismayed at the hard stance on immigration Starmer and his Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood are now taking.
However, some Labour insiders, it’s reported, are surprised however that Rayner has set herself so firmly against the government's planned new restrictions on immigration. This point however, would appear to be the pivot on which Rayner can express deeper concerns on the direction in which this Labour government is heading.
Rayner said it was “un-British” to move the goalposts on indefinite leave to remain, putting her at odds with the government’s key new immigration proposal of increasing the standard qualifying period for permanent residence from five to 10 years.
She went further, arguing that “the very survival of the Labour Party is at stake – as a party and a movement we cannot hide, we cannot go through the motions in the face of decline. We are running out of time.”
Her argument will chime with all those countless Labour voters who are wondering what they actually voted for back in 2024.
The recent chaos in Downing Street, the briefings for and against divisive figures such as Sir Peter Mandelson, the now disgraced former ambassador to the US, and Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s former chief of staff who resigned in February, does not sit well with the rest of the party, or indeed the public.
An impression has been left, Rayner added, that the government “represented the establishment, not working people. At worst, we became it”.
Was this a veiled nod to her own situation regarding that contentious second home by the sea in Hove, near Brighton, hundreds of miles away from her constituency in Greater Manchester?
It’s reported that Rayner's tax affairs are understood to remain unsettled, with several Labour MPs questioning whether she could stand for the leadership with the issue outstanding. This is slightly premature. Unless an emergency occurs, there is no leadership contest on the immediate horizon, at least until we find out what happens in the May local elections.
And even then, with Andy Burnham also lending his support to the Mainstream group, there is no guarantee that in the event of any challenge, Rayner would actually be the candidate backed by this faction of the party.
There are many machinations yet to come, not least – should it come to it – addressing the fact the Burnham does not currently hold a parliamentary seat and the Labour rule book does not automatically permit a metro mayor to step down to fight one. But that is all detail just now.
Hiding behind party loyalty has been a chronic disease affecting Labour for decades now. This public-facing spirit of unity can do more damage than good. Veteran Labour peer Harriet Harman has weighed in against Rayner’s speech, saying “it's just a negative intervention”, and criticising it for lacking any plans for how she might do government differently.
But that wasn’t Rayner’s point. She’s following her instincts, reaching out to likeminded Labour members and testing the temperature, not presenting a market-researched manifesto.