Let’s peer six months into the future. Will Angela Rayner be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Might she represent our country on the world stage, and rub shoulders with Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron? Can we imagine her standing outside No 10 and telling us how she will change Britain for ever?
The answer to these nightmarish questions is not far short of ‘Yes’. Rayner has more chance than anyone else of being Prime Minister in six, or even three, months – certainly more than Wes Streeting or Andy Burnham or Ed Miliband.
More chance, too, than Sir Keir Starmer, whose characteristically self-serving sacrifice of his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney is unlikely to prolong his prime ministership if Labour loses the Gorton and Denton by-election in just over two weeks’ time and is wiped out in May’s local elections.
Has it really come to this? This country has had several abysmal leaders in my lifetime but none of them could compete with Angela Rayner.
She is wholly unqualified for the highest office. It is a sign of how debased our politics has become that she should even be considered for it.
Some Labour MPs are shamelessly championing her only five months after she was sacked for failing to pay £40,000 stamp duty on the purchase of an £800,000 flat, and second home, in Hove. HMRC hasn’t yet announced the outcome of its investigation.
Angela Rayner has more chance than anyone else of being Prime Minister in six, or even three, months – certainly more than Wes Streeting, Andy Burnham or Ed Miliband
My terror of Rayner has nothing to do with snobbery. Many of us would rejoice if someone who had left school at 16 with no qualifications and a baby on the way transformed herself through hard work, study and self-improvement into a formidable, effective politician.
Weaknesses
Rayner has done no such thing. She has buckets of political guile yet lacks the experience and knowledge once deemed essential to statecraft. She has remained at heart a class warrior, not long ago describing Tories as ‘scum’ as well as ‘homophobic, racist, misogynistic, nasty and vile’.
Compare her to that great politician Ernest Bevin, who was Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour government. Bevin’s background was even more deprived than Rayner’s. His father had done a bunk, and his mother died when he was eight. He had almost no education, and left school at 11.
Like Rayner, Bevin became a trade union official, but unlike her he took advantage of opportunities that came his way to educate himself and deepen his political understanding.
In the 1930s, by which time he led the Transport and General Workers’ Union, he immersed himself in foreign affairs, so that when he became Foreign Secretary in 1945 he knew what he was talking about.
Like Rayner, Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour government, became a trade union official – but unlike her he took advantage of opportunities that came his way to educate himself and deepen his political understanding
Bevin didn’t hate Tories. He was a patriot who never disguised his origins (he spoke with a West Country accent) or forgot the interests of working people. He sought to serve the entire British nation.
Could there be a greater contrast with Angela Rayner? This divisive woman appears to have very limited knowledge of economics or foreign affairs, and has made little attempt to acquire any expertise in either subject.
We may stand on the verge of a European war. Would any of us feel remotely comfortable if she were the occupant of No 10? For all Starmer’s manifest weaknesses, he is a far safer pair of hands, and apparently taken seriously by other world leaders.
Why, then, does Rayner have so much support in the Labour movement, especially among party members and trade unionists, who will have a vote to choose Starmer’s successor if – I should probably say ‘when’ – he is led away?
Some of them want a female leader. Many are drawn to Rayner because they believe she is authentically Left-wing, and could be counted on to lead a much more socialist government than Starmer.
They are right about that. Rayner’s ministerial experience is slight, but until she left office last September she revelled in promoting the radical Employment Rights Bill.
Failed
Although this has been watered down by Downing Street, the Government has variously said it will cost employers between £1billion and £5billion a year. Now passed into law, it includes a ban on zero-hour contracts and a right to statutory sick pay from the first day of illness.
There is also absolutely no reason to believe that Rayner is a competent politician. And yet this flawed and uncouth woman is ahead in the betting
A Rayner-led government would doubtless award the trade unions more new privileges. It would increase taxes still further, raise public expenditure (excluding defence), and do even less than the current administration to curtail spiralling welfare spending.
We shouldn’t assume that Rayner’s political guile would somehow see her through. Apart from presiding over the damaging Employment Rights Bill, she failed as Housing Secretary to deliver Labour’s commitment to build many more houses than the Tories.
They have actually put up many fewer. The Tories completed about eight per cent more homes in their final, disappointing year of office than Labour in its first year. Its target of one and a half million new homes in this Parliament won’t be met.
In short, Angela Rayner is not only a class warrior under investigation by HMRC who is unschooled in economics or world affairs and likely to favour Left-wing policies.
There is also absolutely no reason to believe that she is a competent politician.
And yet this flawed and uncouth woman is ahead in the betting. Streeting is reckoned by some to have been too close to the disgraced Peter Mandelson, and has hardly covered himself in glory in shaking up the NHS. Andy Burnham has so far been prevented by Starmer from finding a seat.
As for Ed Miliband, who is reportedly negotiating a common platform with the Greens, we would all be sitting in darkened rooms eating powdered soup by the end of his premiership.
Surely even Labour couldn’t be so daft as to choose him.
The idea that a new leader will somehow rescue the party’s fortunes is in any case a fantasy.
People won’t relish replacing an admittedly hopeless prime minister for whom they voted with another whom they didn’t choose, complete with a whole new set of policies.
Labour should call a new election but it isn’t going to do that because it knows it would be destroyed, with many of its not obviously gifted MPs ending up on the dole.
Like the Tories who brought about the defenestration of Boris Johnson in 2022, this disintegrating Government resembles a private sect, with its warring members thinking only of their own skins.
There is even crazy talk of finding a caretaker Prime Minister who could hold the crumbling fort while Rayner and the others sorted out their problems – in her case getting a clean bill of health from HMRC. The interests of Labour are put above what is best for the country.
What’s best for the country is categorically not Rayner. Alas, she will draw strength from the sight of Morgan McSweeney being thrown overboard. She’ll see that Starmer is on the ropes, and will very soon be knocked out of the ring.
The prospect of her ensconced in No 10 is truly terrifying. Starmer is the most abject Prime Minister of my lifetime, but Angela Rayner would be so much worse.