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Back in July, Angela Rayner told a private meeting of Labour’s National Executive Committee that the next 12 months would determine whether the party wins a second term. It was a stark warning that a restive electorate could soon form a settled view on the government.
As the debate over Labour’s future intensifies – Neil Kinnock this week said Keir Starmer had “months, not years” to improve – Rayner has signalled that she intends to be a participant rather than an observer. The 10-minute resignation statement she gave yesterday in the Commons – not a formal requirement – was notable first for its audience. Rachel Reeves, with who Rayner clashed over tax policy, David Lammy, Bridget Phillipson, Steve Reed and Jonathan Reynolds were all in attendance on the front bench – a signal of the esteem in which she is held. “It’s certainly possible, she has a lot to offer,” one cabinet minister says of the prospect of Rayner returning to government.
Her speech, delivered next to Jim McMahon, one of the numerous north-west MPs sacked in the recent reshuffle, was a reminder of how she built her cross-factional appeal. The former Unison shop steward hailed a trade union movement that has lacked an equivalent cabinet champion since her departure, invoking her “socialist values” and the “vested interests” she has defied.
Though in government for little more than a year, she was able to cite the Employment Rights Bill and the Renters’ Rights Bill as signature legislative achievements. The message was clear: I am a doer, not just a talker.
But Rayner, who continued to praise New Labour throughout the Corbyn years, also told a more Blairite story of opportunity. “People wrote me off, assumed that I would be on benefits for the whole of my life, but I wanted to prove them wrong,” she said, recalling how Sure Start and the minimum wage transformed her life as a young single mother.
Rayner sought Tony Blair’s counsel during her time in government, addressing his institute’s Christmas drinks last year in a mark of their bond. But there was also a nod to Gordon Brown, another ally, as Rayner declared that “Labour is at its best when we are bold”, the most memorable line of the defiant conference speech Brown gave in 2003.
Jon Cruddas, the former MP and Labour historian, told me not long before Rayner’s resignation that she was one of the few figures capable of speaking to all three of the party’s main intellectual traditions: a utilitarian one concerned with distribution; a liberal one focused on freedom and constitutional reform; and an ethical socialist one devoted to the good society. “For the party to prosper these three traditions have to be reconciled and I think the evidence is that she has the capacity to do that,” he said then.
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But Rayner is not without her critics. “Ask her what Raynerism would look like and you’d get a blurry image of Starmer shown back to you,” says one Labour figure more attracted by Andy Burnham’s “popular left programme”.
If Rayner is to be a defining figure in the party’s future – and MPs from all wings regard her as a potential leadership contender – she will need to prove she has an answer to this charge: that she has a back story but no front story. Yet for now, with a single intervention from the backbenches, Rayner has shown how she could become Labour’s queen over the water.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here.
[Further reading: Starmer doesn’t understand Green voters]
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