Angela Rayner's Alternative

As everyone knows, last week it was Angela Rayner's turn to upset Labour's apple cart. And it was all going so well. Her speech has been extensively reported and commented on, and there's not much that needs adding. Rayner's positioning for the inevitable leadership putsch following the locals! She's venting the frustrations of the grassroots! She's angling for a cabinet return once HMRC have pronounced on her tax affairs! She's reminding us that she exists! All of these positions were argued out in sundry outlets, and all of them are true.

As for the content of her speech to Mainstream, there's not much the average Labour member, or MP for that matter, would find disagreeable. Among Rayner's remarks was a worry that the party and the movement was facing a terminal crisis, "... we cannot go through the motions in the face of decline. We are running out of time." She's right. The traditionally myopic parliamentary party has not failed to notice the surging Greens and how Labour regularly trails them in surveys by two pollsters, but this just reaffirms the hostility canvassers are getting on punters' doorsteps, the diminishing band of volunteers up for this, the rapid emptying out of constituency meetings, and the feeble performance in council by-elections. What she doesn't mention, naturally, is her own role in overseeing the process that has hollowed out the party and pruned its roots.

Still, there was something quite significant that she said. Arguing against the ever-rightward push on immigration, she said that Shabana Mahmood's policies were "un-British" because of their unfairness that amounted to moving the goalposts. They were "not just bad policy but a breach of trust". Rayner could have gone a step further on from liberal moralism and noted how they were bad politics as well, but perhaps that would have been too much of an open challenge at this stage. Nevertheless, everyone got the message.

Including other Labour MPs. One nameless interlocutor said "The public support for what Shabana is doing is enormous, it’s probably the most popular thing the government is doing." Except it's not. Labour have thoroughly imbibed the politics of cruelty while driving immigration figures down. And the thanks they get for this? None whatsoever. Nothing Labour can do, nothing in Mahmood's programme of grinding refugees into the dirt can win over the "very real concerns" brigade of Reform voters. But what it can do, and is doing, is alienating further Labour's support on the left and in the centre. You know, the latter being where elections are won - at least according to the gospel of St Tony. Rayner, thanks to coming up through the trade union movement, understands better than cabinet yuppies that this doesn't play with the class she came from. Social conservatism is actually about defending and bettering the life chances of working class people, something one of Blue Labour's paragons affects to understand, but mysteriously, somehow, always provides an excuse for a very middle class racism, delivered at a remove by the boot of the state. Something too many Labour minister relish the chance doing, as long as they can pin the blame for this on "it's what the voters want".

However, word is abroad in Westminster circles that Mahmood is far from happy with these criticisms, and has said she'll quit if her attack on refugees and immigrants is diluted by Starmer. The latter's shifting mood is, apparently, not only because of Rayner's intervention but the realisation that the party might need those left and centrist voters after all.

In truth, given the US/Israeli attack on Iran and the inevitable consequences of retaliation and escalations - oil, gas, and fertiliser shortages, galloping energy prices, this all seems like a ridiculous sideshow. It's telling that having taken place more than a week after the beginning of the war, Rayner's speech did not reflect on it nor its impact in any meaningful way. And here is Rayner's problem. Yes, she is savvier than most of her (former) cabinet colleagues. Yes, she has a better understanding of the shape and sociology of Labour's support. But, apart from less overt racism, what is she offering apart from alternative vibes? Remember, Rayner was happy to ditch the left when it was politic to do so. She sat back as the Labour right gutted the party of its actual, living links to working class people, and even kept quiet when they systematically barred her allies in Manchester and the North West from selection. Rayner is a snappy, charming speaker and a charismatic figure, but politicians whose actions have contributed to a crisis rarely prove to be the ones capable of solving it.

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