How Angela Rayner became the power behind the throne

Telegraph

2 days ago

It was the picture at PMQs that told a thousand words about two women's changing fortunes. While Rachel Reeves wept on Wednesday, Angela Rayner sat beside her, stony faced and resolute. As gilt yields shuddered in the City, the political stock of the Deputy Prime Minister was rising, just as the Chancellor's was falling. In fact, after Sir Keir Starmer's climbdown over welfare reform, in the face of a bruising public battle between ministers and Labour backbenchers, Rayner emerges as the only frontbencher with her stature significantly enhanced.
She has, it seems, played her role to perfection throughout this crisis. In public, she has been the model example of loyalty, dutifully repeating No 10's lines at the despatch box, whatever her private reservations about the scale of welfare cuts signed off by Starmer and Reeves.
Yet after Starmer narrowly avoided a defeat on the Welfare Bill on Tuesday night, by significantly watering down his plans, reports credited her with helping to broker key last-minute compromises with MPs. In the eyes of MPs on the Left of the party, who see Rayner as something of a tribune, she has helped to temper a policy they hated. To colleagues in Government, she has helped also win the day – avoiding an embarrassing defeat on the floor of the Commons.
'Angela's had a good war,' reflected one MP in the parliamentary bar, after the vote. Such sentiments are quietly being echoed across the party, as Labour ruefully reflects on its first year in office.
The steady increase in Rayner's power is an underappreciated story of the last 12 months. Upon entering government, her power base appeared to have been curtailed by Starmer, following a series of skirmishes between the pair in Opposition. Rayner was denied the status she craved: her own department, an 'Office of Deputy Prime Minister', giving her parity with John Prescott under Tony Blair. In the absence of that, allies talked up the extent of her responsibilities in government, having also been put in charge of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and given special responsibility for employment rights.
However, Dorneywood, Prescott's old grace-and-favour countryside abode in Buckinghamshire, which is traditionally available to the second most senior member of government, was handed to Reeves, not Rayner ('Rachel wanted Dorneywood, I'm happy for Rachel to be using it,' said Rayner last year). Initially, she was not listed as a permanent member of the National Security Council, despite previous deputy prime ministers being included as standing members.
All that seems very different now. In the coming weeks, she will get her official Office of Deputy Prime Minister, with 30 staff, a new logo and email domain. It will cement Rayner's status at the heart of power, and sharpen her elbow when it comes to coordinating her policy agenda across Whitehall.
As Starmer struggles with plummeting public opinion ratings and increasingly rebellious colleagues, Rayner is increasingly seen by colleagues as the woman who is making much of the running in this administration. While Starmer himself is regarded as insufficiently bold, the reforms for which Rayner is directly responsible, which include relaxing green belt rules and strengthening trade union powers, are giving succour to Labour backbenchers desperate for radical change. 'Planning and trade unions are two things to cheer about,' says one welfare rebel. 'Angela is key to both.'
Planning reform has become one of the great hopes of this Government. Rayner's target of building 1.5 million new homes by 2029 is viewed by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) as one of the few Labour measures that is likely to boost growth. Cheered on by the 100-strong Labour Growth Group, Rayner has become the face of supply-side social democrats in the cabinet. Her promise to build 180,000 social houses wins her kudos on the Left of the party, too.
Then there are her municipal reforms. In December, she announced a 'devolution revolution' – the biggest shake-up of local government since the 1970s. It involved cancelling a swathe of elections across the country, prompting howls of protest from Reform. But the plan bore the hallmarks of a fiercely political minister, stamping her authority on a long-divisive subject. She is showing a similar determination in her plans to radically rebalance council tax to prioritise deprived areas – a move that is likely to see tax bills rising in the South to fund investment in the North. 'She has the guts to do what Boris Johnson never could,' argues one Labour source. 'Actually do proper levelling-up.'
Key to Rayner's growing power within Labour is her brief on employment rights. She is championing the biggest restoration of trade union rights in decades, piloting Labour's flagship legislation through parliament. For her own MPs, who have grown increasingly muted during Starmer's performances at PMQs, it gives them something to cheer about. 'Socialism is what a Labour government does,' declared Herbert Morrison. Increasingly, for frustrated Labour backbenchers, Rayner is one of the few ministers who seems to grasp this.
Such an expansive portfolio gives Rayner plenty of face time with her 400 parliamentary colleagues. Unlike the Prime Minister, who has entered the Commons voting lobbies on just a handful of occasions since the election, Rayner is praised by colleagues as 'accessible' and 'reasonable'. In both age, tastes and background, the 45-year-old Rayner is seen by some younger MPs as a much warmer figure than the somewhat stiff Starmer. A self-described 'vape dragon', karaoke fiend and lover of Venom cocktails (vodka, Southern Comfort, Blue WKD and orange juice, for the uninitiated), she is well-liked across the party. Even Nigel Farage, who has little time for much of the current cabinet, has praised her authenticity: 'At least she is real – none of the rest are.'
Rayner's rise has coincided with the collapse of rivals within the party. Reeves is now, according to Ipsos, the most unpopular politician in the country. Yvette Cooper faces an impossible summer at the Home Office, dealing with an endless stream of small boats across the Channel. Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, and a one-time possible rival from the soft Left, has been besieged by criticism over her changes to academies. Wes Streeting, the Blair-loving Health Secretary, is one of the few to have been enhanced, rather than diminished, by his time in office – not least thanks to his bold start on NHS reform.
Many of Starmer's allies would hope that it is Streeting, not Rayner, who eventually succeeds him. Yet Rayner's union connections and standing among party members would likely give her the edge in any future contest. 'It's a while off – but it will be Angela,' says one minister, confidently.
For now, her allies can take comfort in the fact that it is Rayner's agenda that is driving so much of the current administration. While Reeves and Starmer struggle in Downing Street, Rayner is the one who gives her MPs something to cheer. Her moment could well come next May, when Labour is likely to lose the Welsh parliament elections for the first time since devolution in 1999, as well as suffer heavy losses in Scotland and the London boroughs. Labour MPs – rarely the most regicidal types – could get jolted into action. Should they do so then the red queen, for so-long overlooked, is ready to inherit the throne.