Sir Keir Starmer is dead on his feet. Angela Rayner can scent blood.
Angela Rayner can scent blood – it belongs to PM Keir Starmer (Image: Getty)
The PM ducked and weaved in Parliament yesterday, as he tried to blame everyone involved in Peter Mandelson’s failed vetting except himself. Real leaders take responsibility. He dodged it at every opportunity. Worse, he tried to save his own skin by dumping the blame on his underlings. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch came out swinging. She had him pinned but didn’t quite land the knockout blow. In truth, she was never going to. That privilege belongs to someone else.
The country is sick of our hapless PM. He was always a manufactured politician, with no instinct for the fight. He has no feel for language either, the English tongue dies on his lips. And he’s not even the straight, decent operator we were promised. Yesterday, Reform MP Lee Anderson was thrown out of the Commons after claiming that the PM “couldn’t lie straight in bed”. Unparliamentary, yes, but you can see what drove him to it.
Labour MPs have had enough too. They know he’s completely out of his depth. Disappointment with Starmer may be the only thing uniting the country right now. We’re certainly not going to be united by what follows. Especially if it’s Angela Rayner.
While everybody is happy to sink their teeth into Starmer these days, Rayner is Marmite. Lefties lap her up. She has a compelling hard scrabble backstory that the rest of the cabinet would kill for, and can connect with ordinary people. After Starmer, simply sounding human would be an upgrade.
Others think the former deputy PM is too gobby and combustible for high office. This is a woman who described senior Tories as “a bunch of scum”. She later apologised, following the murder of Conservative MP David Amess.
Rayner has baggage too. She sold her council house at a profit while opposing Right to Buy, then sidestepped a £40,000 stamp duty bill while calling for higher taxes on everyone else.
But there’s one thing everyone agrees on. She’s a battler. We’ll see another example this evening.
With impeccable timing, she’s preparing a set-piece speech calling for “bolder action” from Starmer’s faltering administration. It’s part of a Labour Growth Group event, The Times reports today.
Rayner will warn that Starmer’s “caution and incrementalism” risks opening the door to a populist takeover. The subtext is clear. Only one woman can take the fight to Nigel Farage. You’ll never guess who.
For now, she won’t move openly. Not before the May elections, when Labour is cruising for a bruising. She doesn’t want to share in the blame for that. Also, she’s also boxed in while questions linger over her tax affairs.
But she can see what everyone else can. Starmer is groggy, taking shots from all sides and offering nothing back. He’s got nothing left in his locker, if he ever had. Rayner is circling, picking her moment. She doesn’t want to throw wild punches, she wants to put him on the canvas. And if she does make it into number 10, the rest of us won’t know what’s hit us either.