Angela Rayner resigns - can a reshuffle save Labour?

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. So we're going to phase two, 1st of September 2025 in good spirits, confident and with conviction about what we're doing. That was Keir Starmer on hopeful Monday. By Friday, the world looks an utterly different place for him as his leadership is plagued by the forced resignation of the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner. She resigns not just as Deputy Prime Minister, but as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. What happens to Starmer's government and to the shape of the Labour Party now? This was the week he called a reset. It couldn't have ended in a worse way.

0:48Welcome to The News Agents.

0:54The News Agents. It's John. It's Emily. And it's Lewis. Where are you? I'm at the centre of the political universe right now, John, which is Cape Cod. Don't think it's been centre of the political universe since the 1960s, actually, but I'm just making sure everything's in order. Yeah, I mean, Kennedy era, you are at the centre of the political universe. The Rainer era, not so much. It's all anyone's talking about on Nantucket. Where is the Rainer era? Is the Rainer rain rained? Exactly. That is where we're starting today with the resignation of Angela Rainer, which I guess had been on the cards since about Wednesday.

1:31Entirely possible, but not confirmed until about 12 o 'clock today. Yeah. And as we're sitting here, the time it's half past two in the afternoon. So there's a lot that is still moving. Ministers being rung up to be promoted. Ministers being rung up told you have got the boot. But I guess we've got to start with her resignation. What it signifies. Was it inevitable that she did what she did? she's fallen upon her sword after the ethics advisor to the prime minister, Sir Laurie Magnus, came back and said, look, you are a person of integrity. But on this particular point, you were in breach of the ministerial code because you didn't uphold the highest standards when she was buying this flat in Hove.

2:20Yeah, I think this was inevitable. As soon as Magnus, who reported very, very quickly, basically said that she didn't take proper advice, didn't take proper tax advice, given the complexity of her situation in terms of the house that she sort of owned in trust for her son in her constituency in Ashton. And then when she was buying this property, she saw rudimentary advice, but was told by one of the people that she consulted that she should seek proper advice, which she did not do and I think as soon as Magnus said that and said that therefore she did not uphold the highest ministerial standards that would be expected by the code she had to go but I think that this is easily perhaps the biggest day of the Starmer government save perhaps for the budget there are basically only three ministers I would say whose resignations would materially affect both the politics and policy outcome course of this government Starmer himself Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner and with Rayner gone the consequences both politically in terms of the government losing one of its few star performers one of the only people who could authentically represent the quintessential parts of the labour movement but also can talk to working class voters given her unique political backstory but also just the political consequences now it's not just that she's gone as deputy prime minister with a big reshuffle to boot there is now going to be a deputy leadership election unless keir starmer can somehow fudge fudge it to get rid of the election itself or to get rid of the position itself there'll be now an election for the deputy leadership of the labour party which will be unpredictable which will be inward looking which will be navel gazing just before the labour party conference labour navel gazing is a labour party speciality it is a nightmare for number 10 i think we need to analyze what a lot of this means the wider implications of what this autumn is going to look like.

4:17But before we go there, maybe it's worth just reading some of the words from Angela Rayner herself, because she wrote to the Prime Minister, as you can imagine. And what she says is, I deeply regret my position to not seek additional specialist tax advice, given both my position as Housing Secretary and my complex family arrangements. And you'll remember that what happened essentially was that she talked to one firm of solicitors, and they then came out yesterday and said, well, actually, we didn't talk about trusts and the particular arrangement at all that would involve her primary, secondary residence and the question of her son.

4:52And then she said, I talked to other people, not tax experts, not lawyers, just people. And so she's recognising here that she should have gone higher. She should have gone to what Laurie Magnus calls the highest standards. But it's a bit later in the letter that I want to just read you a little bit from, because she says, for a teenage mum from a council estate in Stockport to serve as the highest level of government has been the honour of my life. The challenges of government are nothing compared to the challenge of putting food on the table and getting a roof over our head. When I brought up kids working as a home help, too many people face the same across our country.

5:26I've always known that politics changes lives because it changed mine. The last Labour government gave me the tools I needed to do a better life. And I have to say, I read that in full and I found it incredibly moving, actually. And I think that you can both feel that it was right in the circumstances for her to have to go because she was the housing secretary and she didn't come up to the standards required by the ethics advisor. And this has always been a really clear line for Keir Starmer, hasn't it? But I do think that if you take the political tribes out of this, a lot of people around the country will have a lot of sympathy for Raina, not just because it revolves around her family, around her disabled son, but because that life story just represents so much to so many people, so many women, but so many people.

6:18a teen mum from a council house who literally made it to the top of government. And she did manage to make politics seem more real, politics seem more alive, less stuffy, more human. And I think a lot of people will be digesting this and saying she made a stupid mistake and the mistake meant she had to go. But actually, what a loss, what a loss to political life in an age when you don't get many characters And you certainly don't get that many teen mums from a housing estate that can make it to the very top. And you don't get very many people who actually lighten up a screen by making jokes. She didn't care if she was in Ibiza on holiday or if she was in a canoe on holiday or she was having a G &T on the beach.

7:00That was her. And I think in an age when we demand so much authenticity, you know, whatever that word means, but we want to see real people, there she was in all her real glory, pulled down and pilloried for it so often. but you know she was something that people I think responded to. Look I think the point about sympathy I mean I spoke to my sister last night who spent her career as a conveyancing solicitor and said look I'm sure she felt when she was filling in that homebuyers report that she was being absolutely honest it would be very easy and she wouldn't know the detail of it. Now yeah once you've got the news that she was advised that she should get further information on the tax implications of this and didn't do it yet she had to go i've also thought there was been something really unsavory about the way that the press and her political opponents have gone after her as though somehow she i mean did she take money out of the nhs unwarrant in an unwarranted manner her son was born disabled prematurely and blind we've now come to learn i mean the money has allowed them to have this house where it can be adapted and so that child can live and there has been something i think really ugly about the way people have pursued the quarry and people say yeah well look that's just politics i think it's part and parcel of the fact that she was the attack dog when labour were in opposition and made a number of ministers lives hell yeah and i think you know there's a kind of vengeance in some of the way that she's being treated.

8:38But I think her backstory and I think that the sympathy will be there. Yeah, I'm sure there'll be people who will be dancing on her political grave as we speak, saying we've got her, we've got rid of her, we brought her down. I saw The Telegraph doing a special edition claiming, you know, the badge of honour that it was us that kind of did it and managed to bring her down. That's fine. Look, that's journalism. You know, it was their story that kind of set the wheels rolling. but it's still nevertheless there is an ugliness to some of this a woman who is trying to cope with a seriously disabled son making the decisions yes she should have done better but it doesn't quite equate to some of the things we saw in the last government where there were obvious tax dodges going on with people on the make i don't think she was particularly on the make i think she was stupid i'll go back to what emily said two things can be true at once right i mean reyna was foolish She was foolish and she was right to resign.

9:32She was foolish because she should have been more meticulous about her tax affairs, precisely because, and this is the unfair bit, precisely because she knew that the right-wing press, abhor her, loathe her, were always out to get her. Why were they always out to get her? For deeply, deeply unpleasant reasons. They were out together because she was a work. She's a very unusual person, very unusual politician. She's a working class female politician who got to the very, very top of government. She was therefore threatening to the same political forces and the same bits of the press. So threatening to them because she could do something that they fear.

10:09She authentically spoke for and spoke to precisely the parts of the electorate that they claim to speak to and speak for. but often erroneously so they fear that because she cannot just be easily dismissed and swept under the carpet with their favorite little trick which is to say you're a left-wing liberal elite you don't anything about the price of eggs they could never say that to a teenage mom from a council estate that is why they hated her that's why she was constantly the subject of sexism and classism and ridiculous stories about her going to the opera and being seen having a drink on the beach and all of this sort of stuff completely hypocritical stuff but that is precisely why she had to be more careful than most, most careful than anybody, because they were always going to find a way to get her if she wasn't.

10:53And that's what they've done. I guess there is also an element. I mean, they would push back and say, actually, it was about hypocrisy. As soon as you are the attack dog in that role in government, then you have to take it if you can give it. You know, she called on Nadim Zahawi to go. She called on others to go. That was the role she had to play and she played it well. And I think there are elements of the Conservative Party that simply haven't forgiven her for executing that role particularly well. Well, and calling them scum. Well, exactly. She called them scum. She was the person who could get the crowd going against the Tories when Labour was in opposition and sort of rally people to a sense of tribalism.

11:38And I guess they won't forgive that and they won't forget that. And so there's a bit of like, well, you know, how do you like it, Upper? How do you like it now? It's your turn. And I suppose it is almost impossible for her to get away from that because that was the role she played. He couldn't be that. You know, Starmer could never do that. Starmer could never go there. And I guess that's the question. When you say, well, Rainer reached the parts of the party that traditional button-up politicians couldn't reach, That's how she reached them. She made people laugh or she made them cheer or she made them feel a little bit kind of naughty.

12:14And that ends up being the thing that puts you in the firing line, I guess. I wonder how we judge her legacy, because in some senses she hasn't kind of done what she was there to do, which is to build all these houses that were going to transform Britain. One and a half million more homes would have been an extraordinary achievement. And she was up against it. But I suppose what she symbolises is her background, having made it to become the deputy leader of the Labour Party, having reached the Labour Party in a way when people were switching off. I mean, you know, the crying shame is that she hasn't had the chance to see whether she could have done that job as secretary of state for housing to achieve that house building programme.

12:59and I'm sure she's kicking herself. I'm sure she's absolutely kicking herself over the stupidity and over the fact that she's being got. And I think it must have been so brutal and this week particularly. I mean, it's always brutal when you're a minister in the firing line, but having to reveal those details about your family arrangements, about this rather complex structure, about the disabled son, about the nest. I mean, brutal. Absolutely frigging brutal. I'm sure we're talking in a minute about the implications, wider implications for the government. I think the interesting thing just on her for a second is actually what she does next.

13:37Truth is about Rayner is that she was not a particularly powerful deputy prime minister. The real deputy prime minister in government is Pat McFadden. He is the one who is chairing most of the cabinet subcommittees. He's the one who has been acting as Keir Starmer's right hand man for the first year of the government. She had a powerful department in being housing secretary, but she was a more honorific deputy prime minister. She was a very powerful deputy leader of the Labour Party because she represented a faction of the Labour Party, which Starmer did not, in uneasy cohabitation with Starmer.

14:10And, you know, let's make no mistake about it. It won't just be the Tories and right wing press who will be cheering Rainer's departure today. There will be elements of the Starmer faction and the more tribal elements who never forgave her for being associated with Corbyn and being of the soft left who will also be cheering her departure as well. I think what would be interesting to see is what she does on the back benches now. Because the nightmare scenario for Number 10 is that if she decides to, yes, OK, she's battered, yes, her authority is severely undermined, but if she chooses to try to become, perhaps with some of the cabinet ministers that we're seeing dispatched from the cabinet today, if she chooses to become a lightning rod or a sort of means of articulation of some of the discontent that we're seeing with the Starmer government and its direction, she could still be a powerful rallying figure, a powerful figure around whom people could cohere.

15:02I think the ideal for number 10 would have been to cling on to her, both for the political reasons that it's embarrassing to lose her, but also because she would have been a deeply weakened and discredited figure from within government. Outside of government, she's a potentially more unknowable, has a more unknowable future, which will be interesting. Absolutely right. We should just say that the reshuffle is going on as we record at 10 to 3. And we're going to come on to that in a moment. Before we do, I just want to bring up a tweet from Jim Pickard of the Financial Times, who's reminding us of a story that emerged last year that Nigel Farage claimed to have bought a house in his own constituency, but the property's actually owned in the name of his partner.

15:39That would mean he legally avoided higher rate stamp duty on the purchase of an additional home, given that he already owns other properties. And I guess the point is not that she could have stayed easily in this job, given what we now know. But it does raise a question of how many times we have probably turned a blind eye with very, very powerful figures in government and outside, right across the country. And yet this has all come down to one woman and£40 ,000. We'll be back in just a moment with what a reshuffle is going to look like and the implications for Keir Starmer if he has to have. a deputy leadership contest in the Labour Party going on right now.

16:32The News Agents. So as discussed, Angela Rayner held a number of roles, as well as being Housing Secretary, as well as being Deputy Prime Minister. She is also the deputy leader of the Labour Party. and that is something that is elected by the Labour Party itself. So when Keir Starmer stood to become the Labour leader, she became the deputy leader of the party. And that means although she's resigned from it, it is not in Keir Starmer's gift to just say, I now say you, Emily Maitlis, you're the deputy leader of the Labour Party or whoever it happens to be. It has to go through an electoral process.

17:14That will, of course, mean, as Lewis, you were saying, in our first bit there. It's just going to be months of navel-gazing, possibly, as candidates line up and possibly someone very much to Keir Starmer's disliking gets elected, a left-winger from the House of Commons, gets elected to be deputy leader, makes life difficult, would then have to be given a kind of key job in government as well. And it raises the question, can Starmer get rid of the post altogether and just say, you know what, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, we don't bloody need it. Yeah, because they are both individually elected roles, you can end up with very different wings of the party between one and the other.

17:59Let's not forget that when Corbyn was the Labour leader, Tom Watson, who came from a very different part of the party, was his or the deputy Labour leader. And they knocked heads pretty thoroughly. And there is a world in which Keir Starmer is looking at a potential tidal wave here and thinking he knows how unhappy the left of his party is. He's seen people like Rachel Maskell on the left. He's seen people like, well, Zahra Sultana before she left to start her own party. He's seen the force of the left in his own party that he's tried really hard over the last four years to kind of pretty much wipe out of existence.

18:37and what happens if they decide that they want to go for it? They want to nominate somebody. They think there's enough votes there to put somebody in who could actually make his life hell and redetermine the direction that the Labour Party policy goes in now, which is why, you know, I mean, I'd be stunned if he gets rid of that role, but you can see why it's quite an attractive position or thought from where he's sitting right now. You should say this is a very unusual situation. I mean, normally the leaders of the Labour Party and deputy leadership roles are elected at the same time. Not always, but sometimes on a joint ticket.

19:11There is a Labour Party folklore about deputy leadership elections, going back to the very famous 1981 deputy leadership election between Dennis Healy and Tony Benn, which was one of the most divisive in Labour Party history. They spent months and months knocking each other to bits, basically over a job which in sort of general constitutional terms has relatively little power, has more power within the Labour Party itself. But there are some structural problems for Starmer if he wants to just get rid of the job altogether. He'd have to get it through the Labour Party NEC. Not easy. He'd have to get it through the Labour Party conference.

19:44Not easy. It's possible. The one thing that Keir Starmer's faction, his team are good at are internal Labour leadership battles and he does have a majority on the NEC and so on. But it would be difficult. The unions would resist it. Nonetheless, there is another bit of the Labour Party rulebook which could help him, which is that it says in the Labour Party rulebook that actually the current leader, if there is a vacancy, can nominate a deputy leader in an acting capacity. Now, it could be there's a lot of rumours and talk about Shabana Mahmood, the current Justice Secretary, whether she'll still be Justice Secretary by the end of the day is another question.

20:16She's well thought of by number 10. But her being appointed by Keir Starmer and then possession being nine tenths of the law, that she would then be the incumbent and she would have a lot of momentum going forward within the party. Because there are, in terms of the left challenging, again it's possible but another rule you need 80 MPs in order to stand because you need 20 % of the parliamentary Labour Party again given the generally reduced numbers on the left and to a lesser extent the soft left in the Labour Party that is difficult but nonetheless the whole thing is just a massive headache for Starmer that he never anticipated having to have basically having to expend a load of political energy on an internal Labour Party deputy leadership battle just what a waste of time yes and you know you know it's friday on monday we were talking about the great reset and that this is what the labor priorities would be you know number one was going to be making people feel yeah you know economic growth in their pockets and have more money to spend number two was going to be immigration number three was going to be you know the rebuilding the nhs numbers one two and three now are going to be internal labor party management which is such an awful look when Labour Party in the country and people are so sceptical about governance and government that this should be happening now is just absolutely the stuff of total nightmares.

21:38The other thing I just wanted to say about Starmer in all of this is that I am he's expended quite a bit of political capital to be very kind of gracious and kind to Angela Rayner in a way that But, you know, and I noticed that the resignation, you know, his letter to her was handwritten. It wasn't the classic typed letter from Downing Street on headed notepaper. It was on headed notepaper. There is a warmth there. There is a warmth there. And I think a respect there. And I think maybe, you know, I'm sure 85 % of that is genuine. And maybe there's 15 % political calculation that if you are going to be on the back benches, I'd like to keep you sweet.

22:13And I'd rather have you, you know, inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in. And maybe there is a bit of calculation there as well. But generally speaking, this is the stuff of that mess. As you say, this next two months should have been about the budget, should have been about honing down the direction of travel for economic growth and should have been about finding the narrative, the story that we're always saying Labour has not yet told us in government so far. Instead, can you imagine what the headlines are going to be about sort of contests and runners and riders and who's trying to get who to step back?

22:46I mean, if Keir wants an easy life, he will just do exactly what Lewis says and appoint somebody as interim and make the story go away. That's really what he has to do now, because I think nobody wants to spend their autumn thinking about internal labour struggles. It's just it's not a great look. Talking of that, we should bring you on to the reshuffle as we know it so far. We've had so far two confirmed sackings. I think we have to call them, the Scottish Secretary Ian Murray and Lucy Powell, the leader of the House of Commons, have both left the government. We are hearing that there could be something very wide ranging because the first thing that we heard about the reshuffle was that the Chancellor was staying in her place.

23:31In other words, everything else is up for grabs. So I guess if you are trying to find a silver lining in this awfulness, you just say, I mean, from where Keir Starmer is sitting, you say he's going to take the bull by the horns and he's going to do everything that he needs to from scratch to give him that new story, whether it means an overhaul in the home office, an overhaul in foreign, if it means really putting in some of your bigger beasts and your attack dogs and the people that he now thinks have to take on reform more vocally, then that could be what is in store for us this afternoon. I think what you're seeing from number 10 is precisely because they are so cognizant of what a nightmare this deputy leadership election could be with the Labour Party conference suddenly becoming a kind of beauty parade of not just potential successes for Angela Rayner, but potential successes to Starmer himself.

24:22The danger is that any deputy leadership election basically becomes a kind of cipher contest for the future of the Labour Party post-Armour, which is a really dangerous and weird position for him to find himself in. And so I think you're clearly trying to see what you're clearly going to see today is a reshuffle, which is much bigger than the one that would have happened in September. The one that was being planned for in September, which was going to be a more minor reshuffling of the pack. the fact that Downing Street have said today that the only person who is safe in her job is Rachel Reeves the Chancellor I think is very revealing it does suggest that there could well be movement in the other two big posts in the cabinet Foreign Secretary Home Secretary one or the other who knows maybe both but he's going to want to try and I'm sure Morgan McSweeney is going to want to try and project a sense that this is actually yes it's a moment of peril yes it's a moment that they didn't want to happen a moment of frailty with Rainer going but it's also a moment of opportunity for a wider reset.

25:15I suspect that members of what is left are the kind of soft left of the party. We've seen Lucy Powell, they're going to be dispatched and you're going to see young blood from the 2024 intake brought in. I think for me, big question is what happens to Ed Miliband because there is no bigger kind of embodiment of that soft left tradition, the Labour Party, than Miliband himself. There's a lot of dislike for him within parts of the Starmer circle. There will be people, I'm sure, right now urging Starmer, despite his personal relationship with Miliband, to say this is the moment to get rid of him. It is so fascinating.

25:44I just wanted to read a bit from you were talking about Lucy Powell there, Lewis, about being from the soft left. I mean, we've got her letter saying, you know, leaving government and proud to have done what she's done and all the usual stuff. But it's distinctly lacking in warmth about what an honour it's been to serve alongside you as prime minister. We've achieved these things. We've done, you know, it's no mention of him. There's no mention of him at all. And there's this sentence that this has not been an easy time for the government. people want to see change and improvements to their difficult lives etc etc so as if well we haven't really done that much have we and so i kind of think that if you think just of the opportunities and the people that are sitting at the moment while we're speaking at three o 'clock in the afternoon sitting by their phones hoping that they're going to ring yeah because they're all obviously they're all in their constituencies so nobody is walking there is no beauty parade outside 10 downing street but just as those who are waiting for the phone to ring those who've already had the call to say you've been fired they are now potential enemies they are the disgruntled on the back benches who feel that they owe no loyalty whatsoever to Keir Starmer they've been booted out and there is also talk but for the Chancellor all the top jobs are going to change as well which is fascinating yeah I mean if I were Yvette Cooper now and you know I could be proved wrong very shortly within minutes I'd be looking quite nervously around me because I would have thought that the one office of state that Keir Starmer really needs to get on top of is the Home Office, either because he wants to give a proper rebuttal to some of the stuff that is coming out of the Conservatives and reform, or else because he wants to move faster and further than they are threatening to do, in which case you kind of want your biggest attack dog in that job right now.

27:32And we'll be back just after the break.

27:44the news agents emily you spoke a moment ago about the small silver lining about kirstama being able to sort of you know do a lot quickly and get this all over in one go surely the other silver lining is that today was going to be natural farage's big day at the reform conference where the bulletins I bet you would have had eight minutes on his speech and the rise of reform. I don't think he's going to be getting so much coverage tonight because it's all going to be about Labour, about Rainer, about the reshuffle, about the deputy leader of the Labour Party and all of that. I think he missed a trick.

28:20I mean, he was bounced into doing his speech earlier. And so instead of it being late this afternoon, he suddenly brought it forward to one o 'clock. A lot of people didn't know, so they didn't get to their seats quickly enough. So it wasn't actually a jam-packed visual hall, which I think he would have sort of ideally wanted. And we were sort of talking earlier and saying he kind of missed a trick because either you just get up there and say, look at what's happened with Angela Rayner. Labour's a shambles. Get on with the general election or else you do something clever about stamp duty. You know, he could have come up with an amazing policy in that first five minutes and said, she's gone, but actually, let's get a policy together that even, you know, the deputy prime minister can understand.

29:00He missed that. The speech actually came across as slightly flat, I thought. I don't know if you listened to it. Had lots of jazz, lots of literally pyrotechnics, but it didn't sound like something that had been sort of honed to win over an audience particularly. Maybe that's because he had them already, but I found it sort of serious and slightly dull, which you don't normally say about him. The truth is, as you both say, either way, even if he'd made the speech of his life today, it would have been largely immaterial. So in a way, it is a sort of, yeah, save it if it exists. not convinced it does but if it does save it but overall you know you can only say that today it's got to be a net win it's got to be a net win for them because what's one of their fundamental critiques their basic critique right is not only are they all the same now we've had a discussion about whether we think this is the same as some of the scandals we saw in the tory years but nonetheless that's clearly the impression that's going to be given they're all the same but also they're incompetent they can't run anything this government is running out of steam already it's already degenerating, it's starting to disintegrate already.

30:00That sense that basically all the mainstream parties are unable, unable to actually govern. That is basically their fundamental critique of not just Labour or the Tories, but the entire system. And that sense of, I mean, I wouldn't say the government feels like it's disintegrating, but losing your deputy prime minister, losing your deputy leader in these circumstances, being forced into a reshuffle in these circumstances, well, to put it mildly, it is less than ideal. it's the fifth minister to have resigned from starmer's government in 14 months that happens but it just looks like when you've come in and said we're going to be so very very different from anything that's gone before we're going to be cleaner we're going to be better all the rest of it and also more competent john the thing about starmer's starmer's pitch was that clean and he could make things work you know he hasn't got the politics but he's got the kind of steady hand at the tiller and this does not look steady far from it right we are done lewis is going to Hinesport.