Angela Rayner’s departure threatens to bring Labour anxieties to the boil

In the build-up to Friday’s resignation, the prime minister expended some of his depleted political capital by saying he was proud to have her by his side. That was all for naught when the findings of the ethics invigilator landed on his desk. Sir Laurie Magnus’s praise for Ms Rayner for acting “with integrity” was trumped by his conclusion that she should have taken more care to be sure that she paid the correct amount of stamp duty on her flat purchase and her failure to do so was unequivocally a breach of the ministerial code.

“I have huge sympathy for Angela, but she had to go,” says one cabinet member close to the prime minister. Sir Keir had pledged a tougher standards regime and to be merciless in the removal of ministers, however mighty or popular, who transgressed. He could either stick to that pledge or start becoming a version of Boris Johnson with a neater haircut. He chose to be “Mr Rules”.

So it is goodbye to her as deputy prime minister, though not necessarily goodnight to her career. There is an established pattern of senior politicians spending time in the “sin bin” and then returning to the front rank. Peter Mandelson, now our man in Washington, was twice ejected from New Labour cabinets, only later to return as deputy prime minister. Ms Rayner is in her mid-forties with plenty of fans for a vivid and impactful personality who stands out when a lot of the rest of politics is monochrome. There is probably a way back for her one day. In the meantime, she will have to decide whether to be a supportive presence on the backbenches or to make Sir Keir’s life even harder by becoming a sharp thorn in his side.

That’s one risk to him. Another is that this defenestration leaves an extremely bitter taste in the mouths of Labour people. Ms Rayner’s biography involves rising from the challenges of an impoverished childhood and being a teenage mum to working as a home help and a union official on her way to becoming DPM. She is a living embodiment of Labour’s ideal of social mobility. Her punchy scourging of Tory sleaze, for which they’ve now had their revenge, enhanced her appeal among Labour folk. She regularly topped the party activists’ cabinet popularity contest run by the campaign group LabourList. Many in the party’s ranks will see her as the victim of the hound dogs of the rightwing media. Some will seethe that Sir Keir has let Labour’s enemies take the scalp of a figure they admire.

He may also miss the role she played in government. Against some resistance from elements of Team Starmer, she turned the job into one of significance. When the government needed to climb down from its welfare cuts back in June, it was she, not the prime minister or the chancellor, who negotiated the terms of the retreat with the rebels. The glee her resignation has ignited among Labour’s foes – Nigel Farage brought forward his conference speech to have an instant gloat – is in part because she could make emotional connections with voters in a way few of the cabinet can.

On top of which, there is the potential for the contest for the vacant deputy leadership to become an unedifying spectacle that inflicts further harm to the battered reputation of the government. “Oh, god,” groans one senior minister. “That won’t be a pretty sight.” Sir Keir has taken pre-emptive action by giving the job of deputy prime minister to David Lammy, sweetening his demotion to the justice brief. Constitutionally, the prime minister is within his rights to choose his own DPM, but some Labour members will be cross that their leader has no interest in who they think should be the government’s second-in-command.

Yvette Cooper has become foreign secretary in order to move Shabana Mahmood to the Home Office. This is the most consequential move of what some wags are dubbing “Morgan McSweeney’s reshuffle”. The promotion is testimony to Number 10’s admiration for her combination of toughness and clarity. Expect an even harder focus on rewriting international treaties, introducing ID cards, closing asylum hotels and speeding up removals. “She is the secretary of state for stopping the boats,” says one Labour figure.

Reshuffles are rarely enough by themselves to revive the fortunes of a flagging government, but Number 10 is evidently hoping that this will look like a decisive response that softens the sting of the Rayner resignation. If Downing Street has its way, the contest for the party’s deputy leadership will now be an interesting but inconsequential sideshow, not a divisive psychodrama. One source of alarm for allies of Sir Keir is that the electorate of activists and trades unionists are much less likely to have an appetite for a Starmer loyalist than a yearning for someone to his left. The candidates will therefore tailor their messages accordingly. Do we really have to be polite to Donald Trump? Why can’t we have a wealth tax? Shouldn’t we tell Rachel Reeves to rewrite her fiscal rules? Why aren’t we banning all arms sales to Israel? Should we be eviscerating the international aid budget to put more cash into defence?

These and other troublesome questions are already rumbling away just below the surface of the Labour party. In the worst case scenario for the prime minister, the contest becomes a competition to identify where he has gone most wrong, a referendum on welfare, fiscal and foreign policy, and a proxy vote of confidence in him. Loyalist ministers are right to worry about the threat that it brings all the anxieties about the government’s direction to a furious boil.

Photograph by Ian Forsyth/Getty Images