RAYNER’S DECKCHAIRS
The first week back at Westminster turned out to be eventful. Writing three days after Angela Rayner’s resignation on Friday and 48 hours after the closing (and rather wobbly) rendition of the National Anthem at REFORM’s Birmingham conference has allowed some time for at least a little reflection on “Whither Labour?”
Quick answer: down the tubes (although, of course, The Tube isn’t working either.)
In a classic attempt at a Labour debate “reset”, all open channels were deluged with the “we can turn this crisis in to an opportunity” line. The backroom spinners had clearly hoped that publicly accepting that Rayner’s resignation was a bit of a crisis could gain them some points for realism while allowing them to divert public perceptions on to the sunlit uplands of the cabinet reshuffle and its presentation of a “new” government setting to work on their voters’ priorities. Sadly, this did not align with the dear old public’s very limited amount of interest in the whole bedraggled Politburo refresh.
The most politically significant part of Rayner’s resignation was the setting off a contest for the Labour Party deputy leadership (shout out, Tom Watson, remember him?) rather than Ange’s resignation of her “executive” responsibilities as Deputy Prime Minister and the Housing, Communities and Local Government department. 300,000 new homes per annum, natch mate, no probs…
A No 10 effort to present a Kremlin-approved candidate can be expected: maybe McFadden, except that his new DWP responsibilities, particularly the inevitable Welfare Reform part deux “let’s just push it through” attempt, might be seen as too weighty to allow taking on party fripperies too. The election by the party faithful is likely to devolve in to a “fight for the soul of the party” which may then deliver a deputy leader at odds with whatever Starmerism is considered to be. Unless of course Starmer decides (unusual to have those two words adjacent) to try to abolish the post entirely to try to avoid the problem. It’s all pretty cringe.
Over the same weekend, Nigel Farage greeted 6,000 activists at REFORM’s national conference in Birmingham with the motivational news that the latest (pre-Rayner) polls continued to hold REFORM steady at 30% (Survation’s 2nd September poll). Symbolically, they were singing the National Anthem (rather badly) in Birmingham as 1,097 migrants arrived in small boats across the channel on Saturday alone. Of course, the Channel crisis does not represent the totality of the migration and asylum issue, but it bobs up and down at the top of public perceptions, which is jolly useful for Nige.
Sending John Healey off to (re-)consider using old army barracks to house asylum seekers and thus disconcertingly revive one of the Tories’ previously ridiculed policies abandoned by Labour on entering office in 2024 looks less like “new thinking” than depressingly end-of-game desperation. What next? Rwanda? Perhaps that could also be dusted off as a “new” Eswatini strategy, given Trump’s use of that extraterritorial destination?
The spinners have missed an important point. Labour was elected on a (probably misconceived) voter notion that Labour represented a “new broom” to set aside the creaky incompetence the Tories displayed in the latter years of their 2010-’24 administrations. The new approaches, new faces and new attitudes that the electorate so desperately wanted in July 2024 have simply not been delivered. The problems remain the same, progress, if made at all, has been invisible.
Solutions proffered look either identical to the Tory policies Labour decried, or actually worse. Cases of everyday corruption continue to wash over the public’s perception of the political class. Rayner’s departure followed Labour lumiaries Andrew Gwynne (sexpesting), Rushnara Ali (minister for homelessness making her own tenants homeless), Tulip Siddiq (pulled in to her Bangladeshi PM aunt’s corruption allegations) and Louise Haigh (undeclared fraud offence over the loss of mobile phone) amongst others. In the face of which, Starmer’s lawyerly indecisiveness can not be re-presented as “leadership” – even by diehard loyalists.
Newly appointed “Chief Secretary to the PM”, Darren Jones was sent out on to BBCR4’s Today on Saturday morning and uttered the single funniest characterisation of his PM’s handling of the Rayner crisis as a “decisive decision” (rather than all those indecisive decisions presumably!) No Darren, it was a palpably reactive attempt to hope that the whole thing might just go away. It didn’t.
“Of course we would rather that Angela had not been in that position, but she was. The process happened quite quickly as well if you think about the point at which Angela referred herself to the Ethics Advisor, the point at which he gave the advice and the Prime Minister acting within a matter of hours off the back of that advice. And as I say the Prime Minister had been planning a broader reshuffle on a slower timetable, but he brought that forward because that is a decisive decision as Prime Minister, that is exhibiting leadership and control, not chaos.”
BBCR4 Today Saturday 6 September from 08:15:00
At 08:23:50
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002j5hs
So, Week 2 of Westminster’s Michaelmas Term starts with a strong sense of déjà vu. A Government incapable of demonstrating competence. An overflowing intray and an electorate quite happy to just sweep the whole lot aside, Government and Opposition alike, in an approach which does not amount to anything more significant than “well, it can hardly get any worse!”
However, that is before one thinks of the amusement a Thornberry Deputy Leadership campaign could provide, the perennial Hyacinth Bouquet-ness of Thornberry’s mixture of curiously unfounded disdain and malapropisms. Let’s all say it: Lady Nugee for Deputy Leader! Not terribly likely to make the cut with the relatively high threshold of 80 MP nominations required, but what a campaign it could be.
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