Angela Rayner is thoroughly sick of being underestimated. In recent months, waiting out her time on the subs bench after resigning over her still-unresolved tax affairs, she has been on doorsteps with colleagues and confronting, time and again, the unpopularity of Keir Starmer, which she has told those close to her is irreversible, unrecoverable, the kind of unpopularity that a U-turn or a fresh policy direction can’t fix. He is seen as disingenuous, weak, always changing his mind by Reform-leaning voters; he is disappointing, inauthentic, insufficiently progressive to Green-leaning voters. The need to change leader is urgent, she has told friends. If the party waits too long, it will be too late.
Rayner is tired, too, of Labour’s “displacement activity” – the various coping mechanisms her party has adopted to avoid confronting the reality of how badly it is doing in office. The fantasy that Andy Burnham will come back and save them is one such coping mechanism, in her view, and exactly that: a fantasy that ignores the facts that Starmer doesn’t want him back, and the numbers on the national executive committee haven’t changed. When friends have suggested to her that maybe Starmer could indeed end up being so weakened he is compelled to facilitate Burnham coming back, she has scoffed.
Rayner and Burnham held a clandestine meeting at her home several weeks ago, the contents of which both parties are resolutely silent about. But you don’t need to know what was said to see the outcome: Burnham failed to convince Rayner that he has a viable route back.
She, meanwhile, is there. Waiting for her tax affairs to be resolved, yes, but in parliament and eligible to stand in a leadership contest, with the “two Ps”, the personality and the politics to make a successful leader (a phrase our editor-in-chief Tom McTague reports she has used lately). She is the former deputy prime minister, who already has experience of foreign policy, having met not one but two Popes, who delivered house building reforms, the employment rights package, the minimum wage rise, renters’ rights reforms, many – if not most – of the achievements in office that Labour politicians are now desperately pointing to in a bid to save their electoral chances. She drove significant changes in her wide-ranging brief. She tells allies she knows how to drive transformation, how to get the civil service to work for her, how, essentially, to wield power.
Rayner’s natural supporters – soft left figures like Ed Miliband, Lisa Nandy, Louise Haigh, Lucy Powell – appear to have gone off the Rayner idea, however, favouring Burnham instead. Her critics elsewhere in the party, meanwhile, warn that she would be “Labour’s Liz Truss”. Rayner herself has long been said to be genuinely undecided about whether to stand for leader. She faces threats to her personal safety, and found the intrusion into her personal life as Labour’s deputy prime minister difficult. Yet just as the Angela buzz has seemed to dissipate something seems to have been shifting in Rayner in recent weeks.
She is now seriously considering launching a leadership bid in the coming days. The Times reported that last week, and my understanding is the same. Whether she does, however, depends on how Starmer handles the coming hours, and what the mood in the party is. So far a handful of Labour MPs have called on Starmer to set out a timetable. Louise Haigh, a key soft left power-broker, has issued Starmer something of an ultimatum, saying that without urgent change “the Prime Minister cannot lead us into another election”. In other words, he has by next year’s locals to turn things around, or he’s out.
Wes Streeting has long made it clear that he is ready for a leadership contest should one be initiated, but he will not launch a challenge himself. At his count in Redbridge on Friday evening, he is not expected to go beyond what other cabinet colleagues have said. Andy Burnham, meanwhile, is not expected to intervene directly in the next few days, and still faces the hurdle of how he would return to parliament. He is reliant on colleagues in Westminster doing his bidding, to apply pressure on Starmer to bring him back.
Rayner prides herself on being a smart political operator, and knows that the support she thinks a serious contender should have (she has told friends a contender would want around 100 MPs to mount a serious challenge) is not guaranteed, faltering even. Yet you wonder, given the urgency she perceives, given her frustration, and given her sense of her own political talents, whether she might still jump and hope that her party follows her. Rayner recently joked to friends “you’ll have to drag Keir out of No 10, and you’ll have to drag me in.” She seems increasingly willing to be dragged.
Of course, this could be political posturing from a proud political operator; if Rayner seems likely to go over the top, it increases her power as a kingmaker, or the likelihood of being offered a big cabinet job soon, or her heft inside Labour in general. (Rayner contacted Shabana Mahmood after reports that she wanted Mahmood sacked and to replace her as home secretary, telling her it didn’t come from her or her team and she isn’t discussing cabinet reshuffles with anybody.) Starmer has made it clear publicly that he wants Rayner back in the cabinet soon. Her allies say she would weigh any offer carefully. Yet No 10 sources tell me there will be no reshuffle in the coming days, with the political moment being too febrile for Starmer. He will instead deliver a speech on Monday on the politics of the moment, and what needs to change. He has made it clear there will be no deals, no pacts, no timetables for his departure.
A trickle of MPs now appear to disagree. That could build in the coming hours. Cabinet ministers, equally, are beginning to tweet their support for the Prime Minister. But the real person to watch will be the redhead in Holborn and St Pancras tomorrow, running miles through mud and barbed wire, and feeling like Labour has to stop talking and finally take action.
[Further reading: Angela vs Andy vs Wes vs Keir]
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