445. Starmer's Deputy PM Quits: The Return of Chaos in British Politics?

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0:21Welcome to The Restisted Politics Emergency Pod. We pressed the button. Why? Because Angel The deputy prime minister has resigned. The ethics advisor has ruled that whilst he thinks that Andger Rayner behaved with integrity and was very open and transparent with him. That nonetheless, her handling of her tax affairs did not meet the standards of the ministerial code. And Keir Starmer was in part elected because he said he would strengthen standards. So, Rory, initial reaction and then we'll dig in a bit deeper. Yeah, well, I think the sort of big, big framing to remind people is that Antirainer is a very, very unusual, powerful heavyweight in the Labour set -up.

1:12She was deputy prime minister. She was the housing secretary, and therefore she was in charge of probably the biggest part of what the government has been promising, which is sorting out the and crisis and building hundreds of thousands of homes, maybe not the biggest part, but definitely a central plank of their entire growth strategy and growth as everything. And obviously, you and I, Alster have been going off and up to leads and other places to talk to housing associations, house builders. A lot of that was about Angela Rainer, Angela Rainer's energy, Angela Rainer pushing ahead with planning.

1:43So I think it matters for the Labour Party, It matters for the government. It matters specifically for this drive on housing. But apart from that, she's also a very, very unusual figure in the Labour Front bench. A Labour Front bench that can seem a little bit cautious, a little bit managerial, a little bit dry. She is this very much more larger than life, relaxed, outspoken, terrific communicator as we found when we did our infu on leading. Evidence? Yeah, I think we should put that out actually, because I mean lots of people will be, lots of our listeners and viewers will have seen and heard it, but some might not, and it was a pretty remarkable interview, I think, and I think it was one of the reasons because she hadn't given many really in depth interviews.

2:31Why there was a sense of a changing perception around it. Look, I'll be absolutely frank about it. I really like Angela Ray, now I think she's, I think she's a heart in the right place. I think she's somebody that brings a lot to the Labour Party and up till now to the Labour Government. If you look at these say, housing, the workers' right, the renters' bill, she's been in charge of the devolution bill that was just, I think, was being debated just before Parliament went away. I might even have been last week. And, you know, she's a serious person. She's a figuring politics, the lights are which I think we need more rather than fewer.

3:10And ultimately, I think this is one of those situations where the personal and the political have collided. I don't know how she kind of manages her private life and how she manages her approach to things like tax and that sort of thing. You get the sense over the last few days as this is kind of unraveled and as the press has got a pile on and the telegraph in particular has been really pushing and digging up new details. You kept feeling she was one step away from perhaps being forced out. I actually think that she's got so much kind of reputational strength in the bank, particularly in the Labour Party bank, that maybe the Wenkei Estonne went out the other day and absolutely 100 % defended her.

3:56Without maybe knowing the full facts, then that is one of the reasons why. But he's been very clear that the ethics advisor having had the power strengthened and ministers having the ability to self -refer, that frankly, if you read the last couple of paragraphs, it's clear that he felt she had to go. Well, just again, to try to summarize for people what seems to have happened, she bought a house in a flat in Hove, in rather a nice building 50 miles from London, and overlooking sea. And it was 800 ,000 pounds. And I think this immediately started probably journalists saying what's going on here because Hove is not her constituency and it's not London where she works.

4:46So what's she doing, buying a house in Hove? And that maybe to do with her personal life, you know, maybe her partners, her new partners based in Hove. But that's something immediately that I, as a former politician, can completely see where the problem emerges from the start before you get under tax. If I had very visibly suddenly bought a home when I was the member of Parliament for Penra and the Board and it was neither in London nor in Cumbria, people would have said, what on earth is this thing? And I would have had to explain. And presumably she would have to say, well obviously I live in my constituency and I work in London and this thing, she would have said her constituents, I guess, is not my primary residence.

5:30And that, of course, led journalists tend to say, well, what's that we all know that when you buy a house, you have to pay much more stamp duty if it's a second home compared to if it's your first home. So did you buy it as the second home or first home? And turns out she bought it, effectively, as a second home and tempting for it because that would have saved her £40 ,000 buying the which aftertax, quite a large chunk of her, annual income. And then I think she was probably stuck between Rock and a Hard Place. And one of the questions which probably she would have been asked is, how on earth can you claim this is your primary home if it's not your constituency?

6:06And it's not London. Just to say by the way, my phone is pinging away with, I mean, I'm hesitant because I don't know one hundred percent, but what we call usually reliable sources that Lucy Powell and Ian Murray a leaving the cabinet. So whether this is leading to a wider reshoff, it would seem that Kierstheim was planning maybe a bit later. So it's brought that forward as well. Can I just interrupt that for a second? If that is happening, why would you move Lucy Pellany and Murray on the same day as you've lost Andrew Rainer? Because that isn't something in my time in conservative governance, we wouldn't have done.

6:42We often lost, you know, amber rod to a resignation we lost Matt Hancock to a resignation but they didn't reshuffle at the same time. I've haven't really heard of that. Well, no, I am not surprised by this because I think he had that mini, what we call was called the mini reshuffle within the Downey Street operation and I think has been planning a reshuffle of sorts. I don't think a big one and he certainly alone think he expected what he didn't expect for Under Rainer to be leaving. So I suspect he's doing it to try to, you know, frankly, it's a bad day for the Labour Party. It's a bad day for the Labour government.

7:15And at another stage in a few weeks, days or weeks time, he was going to be doing this. He's probably thinking, let's just get it all out there. But this, and again, can I just come back? Yeah. Because again, I'm trying to say logic is the counter -argument not to say to you, come on our side, actually, we could make our reshuffle of Lucy Palney and Murray into a positive story. Why didn't we delay it for a couple of weeks when we got a bit of oxygen and then we can really pitch the new people coming in. Yeah. And I suspect this won't be the last of it. I expect this to go on now. I think the point about people are getting very kind of a sea on social media and some of the media I saw at lunchtime are getting very excited about, you know, the who will be the new deputy prime minister.

7:54The first thing to say is it's not a kind of, it's not a constitutional position. And so he doesn't have to have a deputy prime the Labour Party does have to have a deputy leader and the deputy leader has to be elected by the party. So that's going to lead to a leadership election. They'll want to get it out, not least because the Labour Party isn't sort of rolling with cash at the moment, they'll want to get it over with other thought fairly quickly, whether it can be done by the converse and I don't know. But that's going to create a debate about where the Labour government is where the Labour Party is.

8:34Now the bookmakers are saying they're sort of rolling out the names, you know, West Streeting, Yetcoup, Apartment, Fadden, Shabbana, Mahmoud. There will be a very strong feeling, I think, within the Labour Party, we're losing a woman and we should have a one, I think, that there will be, but there will be men who will put their name forward. I've got no doubt about that. And then the question that Keir's thumb is going to get as well, will your deputy leader automatically become the deputy prime minister? My advice to him would be the answer to that should be no. And why is that? Because you just don't know what the Labour Party is going to do.

9:08And so I think you should just hold fire on that one. And then the broader issue, I mean, of course, that one of the factors that led to this being even worse for Angela Rainer than it would have been had it been any other member of the cabinet is the fact that she's in charge of housing, as you say. And there's another kind of little thing maybe worth bearing about with the budget coming up and the budget in very, very difficult economic circumstances where Rachel Reeves has some tough choices. One of the choices that is being floated around is this new property tax to replace stamp duty. Now, again, my advice would be if you think that is the right thing to do and you are planning it anyway, do it and don't change it just because of this.

9:52But it's just sort of these things have a habit of catching you out in all sorts of unintended directions. So a couple of small things. one is that's an interesting one whether the sum special advisor, possibly number 10 saying, oh maybe we shouldn't do the stamp duty thing because the Daily Mail or the Telegraph will have a field day making jokes about you for borrower stamp duty, because I shouldn't pay it. But the bigger thing is I was interested when you were talking about who the runners and riders were for the deputy leader, the figures that you mentioned were streeting effect. I was giving you the bookmakers list.

10:23Right. But there seems to be more on the sort of right wing of the Labour Party in less time. Yeah. And presumably actually there's a real chance that often the deputy leader would might come from the left as the party is a bit of a protest flow to gain this percent. Well, you've got this really interesting thing going on of course because there's Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana with their new party. I mean, there's a load of nonsense floating around that Angela Rainer is going to join Jeremy Corbyn's party, etc. I think you can forget that. We can forget that. But that indicates that some people see her being slightly more on the left than people at Westreeding and that she was the voice, maybe more of the left.

10:57Well, she was definitely, I'm not Westreeding comes, as we know from when we talked to him on leading, he comes from a pretty working class background, but Andrew Rainer's sort of life story and her background story is so kind of special as people who will listen to our interview with it would would discover, that I think she does have a, I think she does have a particularly strong working class voice. I think that, and I think that's a lot of people like her. It's very interesting watching all the comments flooding in. There's this sort of mix of a lot of support for her because they think she's a character.

11:27But an awful lot of people saying, listen, if you're in there and in the past you've called for people to resign and you're the housing person and you don't pay tax properly and you're a bit careless about it, then it's on your own head. Okay. I want to get back to that in a second because I think it's a really interesting question about her resignation. But before we get onto that just helped me understand or listen to understand a little bit more about the sort of left -right splits within the Labour Party. And because it's not just her class background, it's also that there's a sense that Kierstammer represents more of a kind of blare -right, more right wing of the Labour Party vision.

12:07Is that right? And obviously that's why Corbyn and Zara Sautana would say that, wouldn't they? I mean, that's why they left and said often there's been fights about welfare fights. So the Corbin faction would see would see Starrer as being more on the right, right? Oh, well, they do. But of course, I think one of the reasons why, you know, the one of the reasons why they perhaps dislike care as much as they do and maybe even more than Tony's because Tony was always that out there modernizing new labor person, whereas of course, what a lot of the Corbinistas say is that to become leader, Kier put out a fairly pretty left wing perspective, which he since changed.

12:48And I think, you know, I think to be frank, a lot of the anger that Corbin and Zara Zultana direct towards Kier is actually as much about Gaza as anything else in their feeling that he's not been strong enough against Israel. I look, I'd be very surprised, although they'll think about it carefully, but the So, Corbin having gone, you've still got this sort of group of MPs, John McDonald, Richard Bergen, the people that are very much in that Corbin wing of the Labour Party, whether they feel that they will have to put somebody up for the deputy leadership. And so, a bit of the thing is, it's quite a high hurdle, you have to get, I think with the current mathematics, it's about, you're going to need about 80 MPs to want to back you.

13:33That was a move that was made a while back to stop kind of, you know, fringe candidates putting their names forward. But this will definitely be a way by which we're going to see tested the real politics of the new parliamentary Labour Party. And I'm just one final point of the way. I also wonder whether on this reshuffle, if he is going to be doing something a bit bigger, I wonder whether he won't be not necessarily a cabinet level, but I wouldn't be surprise if we see some of the new younger MPs being brought into further down the ranks, because I think there are some really good ones that the public frankly just don't even know about.

14:12Just again, I mean this is maybe too much inside baseball, but Michael Foot was the deputy leader of the Labour Party in the 70s. And then when Foot came into power, it was Dennis as healy, I guess, then Roy Hatterseem, Margaret Beckett. John Prescott, who on the surface might seem like a little bit of a sort of version of Antelirena in terms of his role within the body. But it's what I'm seeing with some of these names that at sometimes the deptye leader has been used to balance the leader and bring in a slightly different wing of the party at a different tone of voice. Not just the party, but also the public.

14:49I mean, one of the, you know, I think John Prescott, as I've said you many times before, I think was a really good guy. That's not a universal opinion, for those who work with John, but I was always gone on very well with John. And it wasn't just that he represented, he would, you know, he coined the phrase about new labor being traditional values in a modern setting. Well, John was very much the guy about the traditional values, and Tony was very much the guy about the modern setting, and that kind of worked together. And I do think with Angela, if you think about some of the things that people say about here, you know, a bit technocratic, not a kind of natural communicator, you can't see him sort of, you know, hanging out on the sofa and loose women really sort of opening up about his bad himself, that's all the stuff that Andgeraina does do and has done and does it very, very well.

15:39So I think there is a sense in being a team. Look, they've had the rubs and downs. There was a period, if you remember, when there was all sorts of briefing against Andger and was she going to get the boot and all this sort of stuff. But no, I think they've come to pretty good mode of sorper and I think we've re -cares letter and it's quite, I don't think I've ever seen a handwritten resignation accept this letter and having drafted a few in my time. But I thought that was a sort of sense of genuine sadness and fondness for her. And I think within it, it wasn't sort of basically saying go away and serve your punishment and come back, but I can see Angela Raider coming back into government other time.

16:21That's why I was a little bit surprised that she also decided to resign as deputy leader. Yeah, because many people thought she could remain a step to leave Labour Party and just leave her ministerial position. It's become increasingly common for people to come back after resignations. And I don't know how common that was. I mean, of course, Peter Mandelson famously would resign and come back a couple of times. But in the old days, if you go back to Profuma and things, once people resigned, that was usually the end. They didn't return. But when I was in office, it became more and more common. So, for example, people maybe remember Amber Runt, who was the home secretary, resigned over the Windrush affair.

17:00and then she, they very much felt they owed her and they brought her back a few months later in a reshuffle towards the end of that year. When Matt Hancock resigned, he certainly thought, you remember he resigned for breaking COVID and who can forget being caught on camera in his office. His expectation, I think, is that Boris Johnson was going to bring him back again. And it didn't happen. But certainly during my 10 or so years in, the convention was, and there's probably would apply to Antioch Rainer that unless what she'd done was very extreme. I mean, another example would be Robert Generic went.

17:37Now, I can't quite remember whether he technically resigned or was fired, but there was a scandal to do with him sitting next to Richard Desmond, the publisher of Juicy Magazine and Renese Papers and Tower Blocks. And then of course, he came back and now he's a kind of leadership. I don't know if the resignation of the fence was sitting next to him. It was the financial discussions that they're there by ensued. I think just talking of the choice, I think it's interesting to sort of put this in this bigger picture of what else is going on in politics. So the news today was probably going to be much more focused on Nigel Fragel's reform conference.

18:21It seems to me the entire mass ranks of the British media and the dozens the BBC correspondents are all reporting in Angela Reiner, it seems to me from Birmingham, because they're up for an Nigel Farage. Nigel Farage, this is what we discussed the other day, being ultimately about news, actually brought his speech forward by three hours, so that he could give his first commentary on Angela Reiner. And meanwhile, Kemi Bade -Knot, the lead of the Tory party, she put out a statement, I thought both of them kind of misread things a bit. For us, because it just plays into this idea that he's actually just a commentator and a media guy rather than a kind of potential leader of the country, who seemed to me had nothing to say about the future of the country apart from the fact.

19:04I gave up when he introduced Nadine Dorees as the great sort of, you know, story of the day. The great reveal. Exactly. And the reveal just for listeners, you've not been following the Inza says, this Nadine Doris, who was a conservative MP, great friend of Boris Johnson, and right wing the Tory party has now announced that she's joining reform to absolutely nobody's surprised. Yeah, and in his introduction, sort of, bigging her up, not only was she working class well and made good and a great author, but she'd also been on I'm a celebrity, get me out of here, and thereby made that wonderful sort of link between celebrity and politics, which of course, you and I think is wrong with our politics, not what's right.

19:41But then, but then it came, it came, it made knock. She's not very good at tone, I mean, it was a really kind of sort of quite nasty, very aggressive, and then onto where I would have gone straight away onto, you know, and the government's not doing a very good job on this, but I actually do think that when somebody like Angel Rainer goes, yes, there's loads of people just think, you know, big public figures, she didn't pay attacks, gets everything she deserves. But then I think there's something she writes in her resignation letter. And I believe this and I've spoken to a little bit about it in the past, is that she does have a very complicated family situation and one of her children who's got really serious disabilities and so forth.

20:29And I saw as well that the somebody's graffitied on her house, the one in and home and all this sort of stuff. So yeah, she actually uses the word unbearable, the pressure on her family was becoming unbearable. Now some people say, oh well, you deserve what you get. But I was at an event yesterday, I know you get this all the time as well, where people were saying, you know, there actually is quite an interesting debate. The thing was, do we get the politicians we deserve? Because, and I did the thing I always do, I asked this audience about, do you know how many of you have ever thought about going to politics?

21:03Not one single person put their hand up. So I think that is another thing that the debate will go to that. Just on this, I think this is really important, as he was met, because I think ever since we started the podcast and you read a draft of my book, you've always felt that I'm a bit down on politics and I think in my defense, I would say that actually politics has changed since urine and that actually the experience of being a member of parliament, particularly being a woman is really, really unpleasant. I mean, really, really unpleasant. And social media is a great deal to that. But just the sort of general sense of contempt.

21:43I mean, when you started covering politics, of course, there's a big tradition of the British mocking politicians, and it's a good thing. And spitting image was out there, and everyone thought they were ridiculous. But the number of people in pinnipulse showing absolute contempt, rage, politics has broken, and they're all liars, et cetera, has got so extreme now. And it's crazy at an atmosphere where, you know, day in, day out, you're basically being treated all the time as though you're an incompetent criminal. You're being given absolute, you know, credit for what you've done. I mean, one of the amazing things is whenever we interview one of these my former colleagues from the conservative cabinets, you know, could be such a java, it could be Jeremy Hunt.

22:28people will say, oh, you know, they work as bad as I thought. They were quite nice. Quite nice. But that's because they have been, all they've seen them for kind of 15 years is so much abuse that the discovery that they're actually remotely human are actually able to speak to things. But you see, that's why in an ideal world, I think that Ed Davies response to this would maybe register more than it has done. and Ed Davie is basically being very sympathetic because he said, I really understand how difficult it is when you're trying to be a public person, run a public life in a very high profile job while you're caring for a member of your family who's got really, really huge needs.

23:12And look, I do think there's something about, you know, I think the, look, to be frank, I think it's one of the reasons that people like our podcast is we try not to talk to each other like that. And although one or two of these politicians can trigger me to go back into the sort of rage mode in the main, trying to talk about politicians like that as well, trying to understand their motivations rather than just questioning them all the time. But I think the politics of this, I think politicians ought to just sort of maybe have a think about whether this is where they all want to go. Maybe some of them do, but I don't think most of them do.

23:47And also, I mean, it is, there is of course this horrible irony which she's got caught in, which he was absolutely brusful to Jeremy Hunt on his stamp duty on buying houses, which I at the time thought was unnecessary and unfair, what he'd done was perfectly legal and within the rules. And she went on this mass of attack. So if they did it to each other less, they'd get it back. So I never did that. I mean, in ten years and politics, I didn't think you can find an example of me ever going after people in that kind of way. So what did you have to hide? What did you have to hide? What were you worried about coming up?

24:19Probably you're absolutely right. I must have been half conscious that if I this to other people they might eventually end up doing it. Well, we had exactly the same thing back in the mid 90s when we had the whole back -to -basics thing where John Major made his speech, let's go back to basics. He wasn't talking about let's stop sort of having offered our secretaries, but that was where the media took it and that's where we sort of followed a bit. I don't think we over did it, but Tony used to really worry about that. So listen, let the media do that stuff, but let's not pile in too much because, you know, let's be frank, we know there are people on our side, et cetera, et cetera.

24:58Interesting though. There's a really interesting question though here from Premier called Gary B. I imagine it's Gary Barlow. How do we start to hold right wing MPs to account for their actions when they simply don't care, have no ethics or standards? It's not a level playing field. So you mentioned Jeremy Hunt. I mean, the media did not go after Jeremy Hunt. Labour might have tried to get it up in lights because it was like, you know, rich member of cabinet makes himself richer even if within the rule. I can't. No, it didn't. In defense, he didn't do anything as bad as Andrew Rainer. So I think it's the it's the it's the like for like that's that it's the interesting couple.

25:33What did he do though? What did he do? No, he was just saying that there's a rule for property developers and people who own a lot of houses where I think they pay less in tax. and because he had a company buying 10 houses, he paid less in tax. Right, but there's absolutely no suggestion of impropriety. Absolutely no suggestion. He had any way broke any rules. But I do think that there is a massive double standard. So there's a story in the papers today that Nigel Farage has got one of these private service companies into which he pours all his speaking agency stuff and his GB news stuff and all the rest of it.