Angela Rayner skewers Keir Starmer with brutal four-word ultimatum | Politics | News
The woman most likely to replace Sir Keir Starmer reportedly targeted his leadership on Tuesday night, laying waste to whatever goodwill remained from Labour’s landslide victory and warning of a showdown to come unless the Government urgently changes its tune.
The Express understands that Angela Rayner’s speech to the Mainstream – a pressure group on Labour’s soft left with close ties to Andy Burnham – was her clearest signal but that she believes the party is heading for disaster on its current course. He is said to have attacked the Government’s approach to immigration as “un-British” and told the chamber that it had allowed Labor to become indistinguishable from the political class it came to power by promising to shake up.
Ms Rayner was reported to have said: “As a party and a movement, we cannot hide. We cannot simply continue to move forward with motions in the face of decline.
“There is no safe ground for us and we are running out of time. The change that people desperately want to see needs to be seen.
“That needs to be felt and we need to show that it is a Labor government that will make it happen and many of you in this room will make it happen for us. Our party is your party.
“And we must come together in the face of hate discrimination and make sure Labor represents the ordinary working people of this country. I’m there with you too, so I can’t wait to meet you.”
It revolves around leadership
The subtext of Tuesday’s speech was impossible to miss. Ms Rayner left the Cabinet last autumn following a media investigation into her tax arrangements, the Telegraph reported; But rather than fade away, he spent months sharpening his criticism of the government he once served at the highest level.
The Express has already reported how serious the damage is expected to be in May, when council elections in England are expected to reach a brutal verdict; Reform UK and the Greens were preparing to take away seats that Labor thought were safely theirs.
Last month, the direction of the tide was clearly signaled in Gorton and Denton, where the Greens took over what should have been Labour’s staunch stronghold and Reform overtook Sir Keir’s candidate, pushing the ruling party into an embarrassing third place.
This isn’t the first time he’s chosen to go public rather than suffer in silence. Previous flashpoints have included the Government’s approach to welfare reform and what Ms Rayner sees as unacceptable delays in the publication of documents at the heart of the Lord Mandelson controversy.
‘We’ve come to that in the worst case scenario’
The setting, a pub in Westminster on Tuesday evening, was deliberately low-key. Ms. Rayner reportedly began by pointing out her history of workers’ and tenants’ rights before moving on to the actual accusation.
He added: “There’s no point in people like me sitting in rooms like this nonsense with lists like this.
“Because – let’s be honest – the public has the impression that we defend the status quo rather than question it, that we represent the establishment and not working people, and at worst, we represent the status quo.”
According to the Telegraph, he made clear that Sir Keir was “ashamed” of Labour’s core values and that a leader who believed in them should not wait to be “dragged” to act on those values. The Chamber was said to understand the reference: a Prime Minister who has reversed course under pressure on more than a dozen key commitments, most notably two child benefit caps and the scale of planned cuts to welfare spending.
Print from all sides
Burnham’s Mainstream project was born last September from a specific concern: unless something fundamental changed, Labour’s poll collapse would be fatal. Mr Burnham himself reportedly confirmed at the time that he had heard from colleagues about taking on a challenge for the top job. The group’s demands go far beyond rhetoric; He wants public ownership of transport, water and energy and calls for a wholesale reorientation of government policy.
Since then, the election picture has become even darker. Reform is systematically fragmenting Labour’s working-class base in its traditional heartlands; The Greens, on the other hand, are robbing younger, more progressive voters who came to Labor hoping for a transformation in 2024 and instead found continuity.
Shabana Mahmood’s immigration agenda drew particular ire from Ms Rayner, who accused it of being “un-British”; This language was calculated to upset a Government already struggling to find ground on one of parliament’s defining issues.
