While the Prime Minister has moved quickly to find replacements for her government roles – making David Lammy Deputy Prime Minister and Steve Reed housing secretary – her vacated role as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party will require an election involving the party membership.
While it is not mandatory that the deputy leader has a role in government, it would be expected. If a left-winger opposed to Starmer’s agenda were to win it would prove deeply problematic to Starmer’s premiership.
The Deputy Prime Minister quit the Government and her party post as Deputy Leader after she was found by the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser Laurie Magnus to have breached the ministerial code for underpaying stamp duty when buying an £800,000 flat in Hove.
Senior Labour insiders, including Starmer loyalists, said it was essential for the PM to ensure a quick contest and ideally a coronation, without having to put a vote to members which one warned would trigger an election where “the clearest route to victory” would be standing “against Keir”.
Graffiti daubed outside the apartment building in Hove, East Sussex, where Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner owns a second home. Gareth Fuller/PA WireUnder the current rules, a candidate must receive the support of 80 MPs to get on the ballot paper.
A Government source said it would be “wise” to hold a quick contest and suggested Shabana Mahmood and Emily Thornberry as potential candidates. Mahmood is unlikely to stand, however, after being promoted to Home Secretary.
MPs were also pushing for a coronation, with one saying: “For the party and for the country there should not be an election.”
They also doubted that the Left would be able to unite behind a candidate to force an election.
Angela Rayner’s resignation letter. Angela Rayner/PA WireRayner ‘acted in good faith’
But leading left-winger Richard Burgon called for “a proper election for Deputy Leader, fully in line with the party’s rulebook — and not a leadership stitch-up.”
Rayner, who was also housing secretary, quit after the Prime Minister’s independent adviser on ministerial interests, Sir Laurie Magnus, said that she failed to “heed the caution” contained within legal advice she received when buying her seaside property in East Sussex, and therefore underpaid stamp duty by £40,000, which she later admitted as a “mistake” which she would seek to rectify.
Magnus said he believed she had acted in “good faith”, but that “the responsibility of any taxpayer for reporting their tax returns and settling their liabilities rests ultimately with themselves”.
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In a reply full of praise, Starmer said Rayner would “remain a major figure in our party” and “continue to fight for the causes you care so passionately about.”
One Labour MP said: “Abolish the role altogether at conference. It’s a nonsense and only feeds internal division.”
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