How bad? Very bad. From Keir Starmer down, ministers were desperate to hang on to Angela Rayner and for very good reasons. Her departure shows that Labour is not behaving like the Tories – a tougher standards regime, and people who live and die by it. But it opens the prospect of a full-on political war between Labour’s soft left, and Blairites.
On the one side we have the large number of Labour MPs and members who believe the party has lost its way, who want to be more generous on welfare, are keen to raise taxes on the rich, including some form of wealth tax and insist there must be a more robustly aggressive stance on Israel, including a complete ban on arm sales.
On the other, we have ministers and MPs who believe the country will not swallow higher taxes, who fear we are on the brink of a market meltdown, who want a relentless focus on migration, and to argue privately that the workers’ rights agenda is holding back employment and growth. They have been meeting regularly in private, and are closely in touch with the former leader, Tony Blair. His one-time allies, from Peter Mandelson to Tim Allan, are strongly influential in Downing Street.
Both groups (and of course I am simplifying), are united in thinking that the government isn’t working. Keir Starmer’s political failure is that he has not crafted and sold a distinctive personal position that can reassure either viewpoint. The centre, philosophically, isn’t holding.
Up to now this hasn’t mattered so much, except during crises such as the welfare rebellion; it’s been underground rumbling, an argument conducted sotto voce, away from the cameras and microphones, by Labour colleagues who still, whatever their differences, respect each other and enjoy being in office.
Team Starmer had been able, meanwhile, to use his deputy as something between a human shield and a threat: get rid of Keir and it’s pretty obvious who is coming in next. “Do you really want that?” This defensive line has now fallen.
So, ask yourself this: how would it feel for Keir Starmer if there is now an election inside the party for a deputy leader, in which a candidate of the soft left – say for the sake of argument Louise Haigh – stands on a “proper Labour” platform; and a Blairite rival, such as Wes Streeting, is provoked into opposing her?
Because Angela Rayner’s resignation has happened so close to conference, it is possible for the leadership to use the NEC to stop and early deputy leadership election. Sensible though that might be, it would cause widespread anger.
Party members are already nervy and alarmed. Imagine the scenes on the floor and in the side-rooms of the Labour conference in Liverpool. If there was a contest – the worst outcome for Starmer – it wouldn’t necessarily be Healey against Benn, certainly not Kinnock against Militant, but it would look like a nostalgic left-right fight. And not in a good way. Even as the government tried to maintain focus, the public would be entertained by a multi-episode drama of “what Keir’s got wrong.”
And then, what would happen if a left candidate won and Starmer declined to make them Deputy Prime Minister? The media would have a ready-made critical voice at the heart of the Labour movement. On one flank, the prime minister would have lost control of his machine.
Again, if he moves swiftly and brutally, Starmer can probably stop any of this happening. What he can’t stop is a wider political conversation, or argument, about the direction of the party in the week of the loss of its deputy leader.
This is perilous because Starmer is already under such ferocious pressure – from the bond markets ahead of the Budget, from an incendiary, hysterical online movement of haters, and of course from Reform which, if there was an election today and the polls proved accurate, would sweep Labour aside and form the next government. Nigel Farage is already warning about the likelihood of an early general election.
Everybody who writes about politics will regret not having Angela Rayner at the centre of things. But she may be reflecting right now on just what huge consequences can flow from the failure to pick up the phone one last time to a boring-sounding property tax advisor.
[See also: What Keir Starmer can’t say]
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