Kier Starmer ‘doing the job for Britain' says Angela Rayner
The Deputy Prime Minister said "there's been a lot going on" in the 12 months since Sir Keir entered Downing Street
Sir Keir Starmer
(Image:)
Angela Rayner has defended Sir Keir Starmer as "doing the job for Britain" as he approaches his first year in office.
The Deputy Prime Minister said "there's been a lot going on" in the 12 months since Sir Keir entered Downing Street, and indicated that she is not interested in the job running the country.
Speaking to ITV's Lorraine programme on Wednesday, Ms Rayner was asked whether the Prime Minister is tired, and responded: "Even before I was in politics, I said that have you ever seen a prime minister after a year or two in government?
"And people always say to me, do you want to be Prime Minister? Not a chance. It'll age me by 10 years within six months."
She added: "It is a very challenging job, and there's been, to be fair for Keir Starmer, there's been a lot going on.
"He's been all around the world trying to repair the relationships in Europe. We've got the trade deals that the previous government wasn't able to do, tackling the things like the tariffs that the President in the US wanted to put onto the UK, which would have damaged our economy again.
Article continues below
"There's a lot going on, and the Prime Minister's been [...] here, there and everywhere, doing the job for Britain."
Polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice has referred to Sir Keir's first year in office as "the worst start for any newly elected prime minister".
He told Times Radio that the Prime Minister was "never especially popular" and that "the public still don't know what he stands for."
Asked if she would be interested in being prime minister at some point, Ms Rayner told the ITV programme: "No".
She said that she is "passionate" about issues including workers' rights and council housing.
"I'm very interested in delivering for the people of this country, because ... to be elected as an MP from my background was incredible," she said.
Article continues below
"Having that opportunity to serve my community that have raised me, looked after me, given me opportunities, and I don't forget that. And to be Deputy Prime Minister of this country ... it's got to count for something."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Statesman
7 minutes ago
- New Statesman
A year of crisis and political fragmentation
Photo byOne year ago today, people across the UK went to the polls and overwhelmingly voted for change. When the exit poll landed at 10pm it showed Keir Starmer's Labour party on track for a three-figure majority – and right on cue the New Labour anthem 'Things Can Only Get Better' began playing at the New Statesman election night party. The following morning, Keir Starmer stood outside the door of No 10 Downing Street (despite the common misconception, there aren't actually any steps), and promised a new type of politics to 'end the era of noisy performance, tread more lightly on your lives, and unite our country'. Well, here we are. The media is awash today with reflections on how the last year has gone for the Prime Minister. You can read one of them, in which David Edgerton argues that Keir Starmer's government does not represent the true Labour Party, on the New Statesman website today. You can also listen to our special anniversary episode of the New Statesman podcast with Anoosh Chakelian, Tom McTague, Andrew Marr and me, where we try to unpack quite what has happened – and where it could go next. So instead of rehashing all of that, I thought we could zoom out and look at some of the other things the election and subsequent 12 months have taught us. British politics is fracturing in all directions. First-past-the-post and Labour's huge (though not unsurpassable, as we saw with the welfare cuts rebellion) majority masked an electoral landscape that more closely resembles multi-party European politics. The Electoral Reform Society (whose chief executive I interviewed in May) has calculated the parliament we ended up with was the least representative ever in terms of how people actually voted. The 2024 result was the first time four parties had received over 10 per cent of the vote: Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Reform. In the May local elections, that went up to five with the addition of the Greens. The latest YouGov poll, conducted just ahead of the election anniversary, has both Reform and the combination of the Lib Dems and Greens on 26 per cent each. That's a Brexit-referendum majority opting for someone other than the two main parties. Those two parties, meanwhile, are languishing around the 40 per cent combined mark: Labour on 24 per cent and the Conservatives on 17 per cent. It would take too long to list all the things they've both done to deserve that (please see previous Morning Call emails over the past, say, five years) but the point is they're down together – following an election that gave them the lowest joint vote share in history at 57.4 per cent. That's new: for 50 years the combined Tory and Labour vote would be a number in the high 70s. This seems to have caught both parties off-guard. Last week I chaired an event at the Mile End Institute entitled 'Does the Conservative Party have a future?' (a question to which no one felt too confident about). Politics lecturer Dr Nigel Fletcher, an expert in the history of oppositions, borrowed an analogy from Game of Thrones: a wheel that sees the great families cycle up and down, some rising while others fall. Dragon-wielding Daenerys Targaryen is determined not to stop the wheel, but to break it. This is, Fletcher argued, essentially what Nigel Farage and Reform are trying to do, breaking the cycle whereby the fall of Labour automatically leads to the rise of the Tories, and vice versa. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The Conservatives' recovery from what they thought was their electoral nadir last July (until it transpired their poll ratings could actually drop further) has, in a strange way, been hampered by a misconception that Labour's sharp fall in popularity would help them by default. It hasn't. All it has done is fuel the narrative that both establishment parties are falling short and thrown Kemi Badenoch's failure to begin repairing her party's fortunes into starker relief. Similarly, many Labour figures assumed one year ago that however difficult the political and economic situation they were inheriting, they could be reassured by the toxicity of their main opponents. Labour could afford to make some early mistakes, because the Tories would be in no position to take advantage of them. What they didn't count on was fringe parties muscling in to suck up disaffected supporters. In a shock move last night, left-wing MP Zarah Sultana, who has had the Labour whip suspended since last July, announced she was quitting Labour and setting up her own party with Jeremy Corbyn to challenge Starmer from the left. Corbyn himself has been suspiciously quiet about Sultana's announcement so far – although he did spend this week hinting about some kind of new movement to bring together left-wing independents. Even before all of that, though, data suggests nearly three times as many 2024 Labour voters are moving to the Lib Dems or the Greens than are eyeing up Reform. But the geographical distribution of the election win (think of the sandcastle analogy) means both left and right defectors pose a serious challenge. They squeeze Starmer in two directions, leaving him trapped. Rishi Sunak would sympathise. What does this mean going into year two of this parliament? In short, things are going to get bumpy. For the first time ever, Nigel Farage is being seriously talked about as a future prime minister (including, in this week's New Statesman magazine, by Andrew Marr). The Greens are holding a leadership over the summer and could select an eco-populist to galvanise the left, or an insurgent Corbyn-led movement could yet emerge. The Lib Dems have set their sights on eating further into what the Tories used to consider their heartlands – if it doesn't get eaten by Reform first. Elections in Scotland and Wales in 2026 look set to become contests of who the electorate hates and fears the least. Wednesday's bond market wobble and subsequent Rachel Reeves love-in means it looks less likely we'll have a new Chancellor than it did last week, but it's pretty inevitable we'll get a new front bench – and quite possibly a new opposition leader too, if the Tories' 'extinction-level territory' polling situation doesn't improve. Who knows, we may even have a serious debate about electoral reform and whether first-past-the-post still works in a landscape like this. In other words, politics isn't going to get quieter. Sorry to disappoint. This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here [See also: The bond market has rescued Rachel Reeves from Keir Starmer] Related
The National
16 minutes ago
- The National
An SNP MP tried to align our party with Keir Starmer. Why?
Normally the policy formulation dimension represents tweaks to existing policy. On occasion though, more pressing issues are debated. The National Council meeting on June 21 in the Perth Concert Hall was of the latter type. In the background, subsequently confirmed days later, was the prospect of the US weighing in on the Israeli side in their war with Iran. An act, as the general secretary of the UN pointed out, that ran a coach and horses through the international rules-based order. READ MORE: Keir Starmer backs US strikes on Iran ahead of Nato summit In Perth, on the auditorium screen was a topical motion on the issue in the name of Stephen Gethins MP. Had it passed unamended it would have upended SNP policy in several areas. Not only on the party's position on international nuclear disarmament treaty architecture, but broader issues of national security and indeed adjacent economic policy. Unamended, it would have positioned the SNP Group at Westminster behind Keir Starmer and David Lammy's position on the Israel-Iran crisis. It would have also represented a softening of the tone, possibly even the substance, of the critical statements made by other SNP parliamentarians at Westminster and in Holyrood. The unamended motion read: MIDDLE EAST SITUATION National Council abhors the ongoing violence in the Middle East and that destabilisation in the region is a threat to us all; calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and full access for humanitarian relief; further agrees that Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons but that the best means of stopping that and finding a sustainable solution is through diplomatic means. Stephen was not in attendance, so his motion was subsequently moved by another delegate. I proposed that three words – 'be allowed to' – be excised. In the end, my suggestion was acceded to and political embarrassment averted. Other amendments pertaining to the, frankly, barely condemnatory tone on what is going on in Gaza, would have been appropriate, but timescales and procedures precluded that. At first, I wanted to accept the cock-up theory. However, after a few days of reflection and being faced with some irrefutable facts, the record needs to be put straight. This must be reflected upon by SNP spokespersons who speak on the members' behalf, particularly on matters of war and peace. Fact one: the motion only mentioned Iran and not Israel. Fact two: it was presented in the name of a former professor of international relations. Fact three: if passed unamended, the SNP position on the subsequent bombing would have been in lock step with Starmer and Lammy. It's interesting how in the repertoire of those who used to promote a 'rules-based order that's not the United Nations' they and the mainstream media are very quick to gaslight anyone who says that historical context is important. However, when the historical airbrush is to be applied to the signature diplomatic achievement of President Barack Obama I must speak out. US president Donald Trump (Image: Getty) The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal that ensured Iran gave up any notion of developing nuclear weapons, was ditched by Donald Trump. My 'textual amendment' reaffirmed SNP adherence to the spirit of the Obama plan. During his first term as president, Trump of course trashed the JCPOA. Now bizarrely, he appears to want to bomb Iran into a JCPOA-without-the-safeguards. The Scottish National Party seeks to achieve the restitution of a sovereign Scottish state. It will be a small state and, as such, on the journey to independence the recognition of the United Nations will be indispensable. READ MORE: Richard Walker: Good journalism has never had a more vital role However, I am no naïve idealist when it comes to matters of international relations. The world is indeed a dangerous and uncertain place, particularly when you share a border with the Russian Federation or Israel. Only politicians with links to the arms trade would want to use fear as a key electoral driver. Arguing that man-made global dangers and instability are uniform throughout the world is an understandable though rather unethical marketing tool for arms companies. The truth is, in the bigger scheme of things, some places are a bit safer than others, and Scotland is one of those places. A fortunate reality that the independence movement should unapologetically make more of it. Bill Ramsay is the SNP Trade Union Group convener and sits on the party's National Executive Committee.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Who is Zarah Sultana? MP taking stand against Starmer
From the moment Zarah Sultana entered the House of Commons six years ago she made clear that she had no intention of following the rules. It is the custom for maiden speeches to be uncontroversial, but Sultana, then 26, railed against 40 years of Thatcherism. She told her new colleagues that her generation had 'only ever faced a future of rising rents, frozen wages and diminishing opportunities'. She added: 'For my whole adult life, I have only known Tory governments who wage war on working-class communities like mine.' The speech was not out of tune with Labour at the time. The new MP for Coventry South was elected under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, but within month Sir Keir Starmer had taken the reigns, telling MPs the party was 'failing in our historic purpose' and vowing to 'rethink'. As Starmer moved the party to the centre, Sultana and other members of the Socialist Campaign Group became increasingly disenchanted with the direction Labour was taking. With Labour in opposition, those tensions were largely kept under control, but on entering power any sense of unity disappeared. Within a month of Labour's election victory Sultana and six other Labour MPs had the whip withdrawn for voting against the government and in favour of an SNP amendment to end the two-child benefit cap. She said at the time that she had defied the party because she had to 'stand up for what I believe are the true values of the Labour Party'. Although the suspensions were initially said to be for six months, Sultana has still not had the whip restored and has been increasingly moving away from Labour and towards the group of independent MPs nominally led by Corbyn. While any new party attacking Labour from the left will worry Starmer, Sultana's involvement will not surprise the party. The surprise in some ways is that she has lasted this long.
