Why has Sir Keir Starmer been so keen to defend Angela Rayner? After all, he hasn’t always bothered to row in behind embattled colleagues, most notably leaving Rachel Reeves to weep openly on the front bench during Prime Minister’s Questions.
But in Rayner’s case, Starmer was busy defending her over the way she handled the row about her stamp duty bill on Monday – even though he knew she was still waiting for legal advice – and then again in the chamber on Wednesday.
Both he and ministers have been repeating the phrase “I am very proud” to work with Rayner, who they then point out “has come from a working class background to be Deputy Prime Minister of this country”. They often then add the (not yet proven) claim that she is “building 1.5 million homes”. The paint was hardly dry on the vandalism on Rayner’s new home in Hove when Starmer rushed out to condemn it on Thursday morning.
What’s striking about the way the Prime Minister has been so effusive about Rayner is that they are not best chums. The ups and downs of their working relationship are well-known: Starmer once failed to sack Rayner, ending up giving her even more jobs. She has at times been openly critical of him, and even more frequently made jokes about her own leadership ambitions. So why the loyalty from Starmer now?
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There is a very human angle to this, which comes in the explanation that Rayner has given for the complicated mess she has ended up in over how much tax she should have paid on the purchase of her property in Hove. Her statement on Wednesday went into more detail than she might have wished to be public about her disabled son’s needs.
This will have had huge sway with Starmer: to understand the Prime Minister, you really need to appreciate how important family is to him. He is also particularly emotionally charged about the privacy of politicians’ children (including his own), and colleagues say he is at his most effusive and human when discussing family privately with them.
But there is also a rather cynical view in Westminster that Starmer would benefit from having a politically-damaged Rayner stay in place: she would lack authority to undermine the Prime Minister or to encourage rival factions to make even more trouble than they already are.
On the backbenches but still as deputy leader – an elected position from which Starmer cannot remove her, even if he does sack her as a minister – she might well pose a serious threat. Someone who represents the true Labour Party against a Government that is frequently criticised for not being left-wing enough.
She was one of the voices sounding the alarm on the benefit cuts that the Government had to drop earlier this year, and would be instrumental in getting through any future attempts at welfare reform: something the Prime Minister still thinks he’d like to try.
However, it is not quite as straightforward as having Rayner inside the tent but more reliant on her leader. A quiet, less authoritative Rayner might make life a bit easier in the short term for Starmer, but she is also a huge asset for Labour’s attempts to fight Reform.
She has always been a better foil for Nigel Farage than the wooden Starmer. After a year in government, Labour to Reform switchers in focus groups are very quick to offer negative opinions on the Prime Minister, so he needs someone else to help win those voters back.
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If Rayner is damaged long-term by this scandal, then Labour suffers too. And chances are that whatever the outcome of the ethics investigation into the advice she received on the stamp duty bill, she is already damaged.
Those Labour voters who are minded to go over to Reform at the next election tend to think that Britain is mired in low-level corruption – often at an institutional level in terms of backhanders in the planning system and NHS bosses and civil servants being able to fail upwards.
The snippets of Rayner’s case that they pick up will reinforce their view that there is one rule for the political class, and another for everyone else – even though Starmer has been trying to argue that his party is very different.
Voters have clearly already decided that Labour under Starmer isn’t different after all, and doesn’t seem capable of bringing the change that was emblazoned as a promise all over its election campaign a year ago.
Rayner isn’t the only solution to that problem, but this blow to her political power hurts her party as well as her personal standing. It’s a blow Labour can’t afford at the moment.
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator magazine.
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