Andy Burnham has unleashed Angela Rayner on the nation. There’s no holding her back now.
Angela Rayner is messing with management again and we’ll all pay in the end (Image: Getty)
She caused enough havoc under Keir Starmer, who never had the gumption to rein her in, until she was tripped up by her own tax return. When she was forced to resign from the cabinet, I swore that Red Ange would be “back with a vengeance”, and I was dead right. Now she’s got her hands all over Andy Burnham’s government, and she just won’t quit.
Burnham is determined to drag Britain back to the 1970s, and Rayner feels right at home in that decade. She’d be right at home in a smoky northern pub, with the union brothers, supping pints and plotting the next strike. No wonder Labour members love her. Rayner has a backstory and authenticity that any middle-class Labour careerist would drop their avocado toast to get their hands on. She doesn’t need to fake a tough upbringing. Hers was for real.
Rayner started life as a union rep and I bet she was a good one. As she said herself, she was “mouthy” and would “take no messing from management”. Nobody in the Labour Party now dares mess with her either.
She’s happy to mess with others, though. Rayner told former chancellor Rachel Reeves how to run tax policy, and now she’s told Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to water down her immigration rules. Burnham’s weak-kneed response was to wibble about backing both of them, then let Rayner have her way.
Rayner is also lifting the shackles on her trade union mates. After years of destroying public sector productivity, they’ll soon be wrecking private sector productivity too, and messing with management just like she did in her day.
Her Employment Rights Act has started the job. Business groups warned that the extra red tape and costs could hit jobs and the wider economy, and bury the employment tribunal system under a blizzard of opportunistic cases. It’s already happening, but Rayner ploughs on regardless.
Her Renters’ Rights Act has also unleashed chaos. By trying to drive out a small number of rogue landlords, she’s terrified hundreds of thousands of perfectly decent ones into selling. Tenants are now fighting over a dwindling supply of rental homes, while rents rocket. Nice work.
Now Rayner has introduced rules that could allow councils to seize empty homes and rent them out. If you thought an Englishman’s home was his castle, forget it. Rayner just stormed it. It’s been called legalised theft.
She’s also dismantled the Right to Buy scheme, allowing council tenants to buy their homes at a discount, despite having taken advantage of it herself. Now she’s riding roughshod over councils by setting impossible house building targets, ignoring fundamental challenges such as land shortages the lack of builders.
Angela Rayner won’t stop. She even thinks the disastrous tourist tax is a good idea. Of course she does, it’s a tax. If she sees a controversy, she’s straight in there.
But we’ll all pay the price for her mad dash as union muscle keeps growing, the economy slows, jobs vanish, rents rise and Labour’s ultimate loose cannon blows away colleagues who refuse to toe the Angela Rayner line. She’s going to be popping everywhere, and we’ll all pay the price.