Angela Rayner won’t win back the working classes

Among the never-ending gossip around No10, UK prime minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Party, a bold story has emerged about Angela Rayner. Starmer, so the whispers go, wants working-class hero Rayner to return to the government front benches after next week’s local-council elections, which are predicted to be catastrophic for Labour. It is a move the former deputy prime minister is reportedly open to, given one condition. She wants the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, gone.

Before her resignation in September, brought about by the revelation that she had underpaid stamp duty on an £800,000 home in Hove, Rayner had been Starmer’s left-hand woman. She was to Starmer what John Prescott was to Tony Blair, giving the robotic and apolitical prime minister a human face – in this case, that of a northern, working-class woman with strong ties to the trade-union movement. In an age where most of our mediocre politicians sail through Oxford and land somewhere on the benches of Westminster, Rayner was that most elusive thing: a self-made woman.

This has been the perception that the Labour left has clung on to, anyway, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The truth is that Rayner is widely seen by working-class Brits as a class traitor. After all, she had her snout in the trough from the moment she got to Westminster and proved particularly voracious in government. She took a plethora of freebies, including holidays and clothes, from Labour donor and media baron Lord Alli. Then she exposed herself as a social climber when she decided that her ‘primary residence’ was going to be an apartment overlooking the sea on the south coast, rather than the one in her deindustrialised constituency in Ashton-under-Lyne, Manchester.

Still, since resigning, Rayner has been an ever-present spectre hanging over the government. Could she use her apparent popularity to challenge the pathetic figure of Starmer for the leadership? Might she act as kingmaker, supporting the return of Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham to parliament? The Westminster chattering classes have been filled with Rayner-fuelled speculation for months.

Starmer’s situation is likely to be so dire after the local elections that he probably will have to grovel before Rayner. And Rayner’s price – Mahmood – isn’t surprising for those who have followed the Labour Party’s woes. Rayner has been criticising Mahmood for months, particularly her migration reforms. These include plans to double the amount of time a migrant would have to work in the UK before claiming the right to remain (at which point they can access benefits) and to remove permanent protection for refugees. As if to show how detached Rayner has become from the working classes, she called the plans ‘un-British’.

This is going to be a dilemma for Starmer, because Mahmood is now one of his most recognisable ministers and also one of the most liked. Hailing from the Blue Labour wing of the party, she is economically left-wing, but strong on law and order and patriotism – placing her far closer to the values of the British public than Rayner and the Labour left.

Another way of looking at it is that Mahmood is responding to the threat of Reform UK, whereas Rayner has directed her attention to the Greens and the threat on Labour’s left flank. So Starmer, who struggles for principles at the best of times, is in a bind – particularly as his former Svengali, Morgan McSweeney, isn’t there to tell him what to do.

It is clear that Rayner and Mahmood are now the political giants within the Labour Party. They aren’t only jockeying for pole position and influence in the party, but for what it stands for. In some ways, it is positive that two women are making the running in a political party that has traditionally left women aside. But the stark truth is neither of these women can save Starmer’s skin, or indeed the Labour Party. Mahmood’s influence could possibly arrest some of Starmer’s decline, but it wouldn’t be enough in itself to rescue his government.

Rayner would be worse. She has nowhere near as much support as Labour thinks she does among the working class. In fact, if the predicted council election results are anything to go by, she is on borrowed time as an MP anyway. The times have changed – for both Labour and Angela Rayner.

Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic.