Starmer resets after Rayner row, but Labour turmoil is a gift for Reformpublished at 08:54 British Summer Time
08:54 BST
Laura Kuenssberg
Presenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg
Image source, Leon Neal/ Reuters
In the end, Angela Rayner’s decision to go was clear cut.
The official report into her behaviour said she’d tried to do the right thing, but not tried hard enough. So the rules had been broken.
Her camp reckoned she had no option. No 10 agreed.
There is frustration that the manner of her exit from government gave her critics what they wanted. But she knew she had no choice, and was devastated by her own mistake.
It’s acutely and specifically painful for Labour because Rayner had personally styled herself as something of a sleaze-buster.
She portrayed herself as a loud and proud champion of ordinary people looking at the worst Westminster behaviour in disgust.
For Labour in general, it undermines again, their claim to be different to those who went before, to return government to the “service of the people”, as Starmer said so many times – to be competent, with clean heels.
Twelve months on, Rayner is the fifth minister who has quit after their actions caused embarrassment for the government. Those clean heels look a bit scruffy now.
The mess is, of course, a gift for Nigel Farage. At his party’s conference in Birmingham on Friday Rayner’s exit didn’t just shove him on stage a few hours early for his speech to try to grab a space in the news cycle, it gave more ammunition to his fundamental argument.
Reform’s pitch rests on a claim that the two big parties are as bad as each other, and preside over a system that is bust.