I want Starmer out as much as anyone. But after him we face a hard-Left extremist like Rayner or Burnham, possible societal breakdown – and a horrendous national catastrophe: STEPHEN GLOVER

A common political misrepresentation is to describe those planning to take over from Sir Keir Starmer as being from the ‘soft Left’.

Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband are said to belong to this group, which is dominant in the modern parliamentary Labor Party and among the wider membership.

The term ‘Soft Left’ is intended to evoke reasonableness and moderation. How can we be afraid of people who proclaim that they are not tough?

But there is no soft spot for Rayner, Burnham and Miliband or their supporters. One look at their policies confirms that they are doctrinal socialists intent on transforming society.

In fact, we already have a government that can be described as soft left. He raised taxes to bring peacetime levels to record levels. It imposed VAT on school fees, leading to the closure of dozens of private schools.

It expanded the rights of workers and, just last week, tenants, and the inevitable result was the collapse of the rental market.

Mansion tax on homes worth more than £2 million has recently been announced. Welfare is rising to unprecedented levels after the government scrapped the two-child benefit cap at a cost of £3.5bn a year.

Labor administrations from 1997 to 2010 resisted all these policies, apart from removing the then-defunct two-child limit and imposing higher taxes on the better-off, which were raised slightly in the final days of Gordon Brown’s government.

Blair and Brown pushed the soft Left aside. Starmer and Rachel Reeves embody this. Yet both may be brushed aside by full-fledged socialists who claim to be the soft Left but are hardly distinguishable from Jeremy Corbyn by any rational definition.

How should those of us who hate Starmer and Reeves react? I have often said on these pages that Starmer must go. He has made countless U-turns and is untrustworthy.

I couldn’t stand him sucking up to Trump. The attempt to give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and pay the government £35 billion to kidnap them is one of the stupidest acts in political history.

As for the Chancellor, he is hopelessly out of his depth and unable to accept that he is innately the principal author of Britain’s economic woes. If a mouse ran across his desk at the Treasury it would be the Conservative Party’s fault.

The sight of both of them gets on my nerves. I’m sure millions of my fellow citizens feel the same. Whose voice is more annoying? Foghorn or nasal buzz?

There is a natural tendency, which I freely admit to be a part of, to want to see through both of them, and thus to enjoy any story about conspiracies against them.

We must be careful what we hope for. One contender, Wes Streeting, may be preferable to Starmer. It is said that it has already received the necessary approvals from 81 Labor MPs, who make up 20 percent of the parliamentary party.

But as a Blairite in the Left party, he has little chance of winning. A Survation poll for website LabourList in February suggested Starmer could easily beat Streeting in the leadership battle. It turns out that the only rivals the Prime Minister cannot beat are Rayner and Burnham.

Wes Streeting ‘has little chance of winning’ as a Blairite in the Left party, writes Stephen Glover

Remember that the outcome of the contest will be determined not by Labor MPs but by voters, who are hundreds of thousands of members of the party and affiliated unions.

It’s still impossible to predict whether Angela Rayner or Andy Burnham will emerge as the main contender, as neither has yet to get their ducks in a row.

Rayner is still being investigated by HMRC after failing to pay £40,000 in stamp duty when buying a flat in Hove. Perhaps she, or her Corbynista boyfriend Sam Tarry, have been waiting hours every day on the HMRC helpline hoping for a solution.

Burnham doesn’t even have a seat in parliament, but a helpful Labor MP is said to be confident of standing on the sidelines. But with the party so unpopular, he could not be confident of winning the safest Labor constituency in the country.

Which of the two would be worse? Angela is a party girl who doesn’t mind cutting corners. After a long evening socializing in the House of Commons last week, he managed to stumble through a door. Andy is a more sober figure who may have a vague idea of ​​how the economy works.

Both are inevitably leftist. Angela Rayner would further expand workers’ rights and smile at the skyrocketing welfare budget. Criticizing Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood’s attempts to curb immigration as ‘un-British’, Rayner would undoubtedly sack her and scrap her reforms.

According to The Guardian, Andy Burnham’s possible policies include an increase in inheritance tax; This rate is currently much higher in real terms than it was 20 years ago.

Angela could emerge as Prime Minister as Andy’s deputy, or vice versa. Either way, there is reasonable speculation that they will seek the services of Ed Miliband as Chancellor. This would be his reward for not running for the top job.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves ‘represent the soft left’ but could be brushed aside by ‘full-fledged socialists’

Ed may do better than Angela, but not in a way that will benefit the British people. The man who last week called BP’s high profits ‘morally and economically wrong’ has been a proponent of opportunistic taxes on banks and unexpected windfall taxes on oil companies.

He championed the mansion tax when he was Labor leader and would likely pick up where Rachel Reeves left off. It seems that he will implement the meticulous Net Zero policies that he imposed on us as the Minister of Energy in the same way.

What is certain is that the hard left measures that will follow Starmer and Reeves will cripple the economy and disrupt bond markets.

Our ability to borrow from the markets keeps the British economy afloat. But last September Burnham coolly said ‘we need to move beyond being hostage to the bond market’. This is premium economy.

Last week, the yield on ten-year UK bonds exceeded 5.1 percent; This was well above the 4.6 per cent that rose briefly under Liz Truss, whom Labor never tired of mocking.

Things are bad at the moment, but they will be much worse, regardless of which of the so-called ‘soft Left’ backbenchers in Downing Street.

And whoever we are talking about – Rayner, Burnham or Miliband – can get absolutely no mandate from the British people because of their excesses.

Nigel Farage has just told The Telegraph that Starmer’s successor will implement policies so radical that they will lead to a ‘breakdown of order’, perhaps leading to pressure for an early general election next year.

The leader of Reformation England joked: ‘In some ways the Rayner incident would be the most entertaining. ‘This gives us the earliest choice.’

Like Farage, I would like an early election, but I don’t think the (probably correct) disruption he foresees would be very entertaining.

Starmer and Reeves may have been a disaster. However, far-left intrigues planning to take over our country will lead to a terrible national disaster.