The week began with a shake-up of Sir Keir Starmer’s Downing Street operation intended to start a political fightback after his Labour government’s misfiring first year in office. Before the week was out, Starmer’s plans for a choreographed relaunch were in tatters. The resignation of his deputy as prime minister and party leader, Angela Rayner, over a scandal linked to her underpayment of £40,000 of tax on a property purchase bounced him into an emergency cabinet reshuffle far more sweeping than he had planned. Her exit creates great political jeopardy for the prime minister, and his beleaguered administration.
The prime minister’s ethics adviser accepted that Rayner’s domestic arrangements, intended to safeguard the interests of a disabled child after a 2023 divorce, complicated the question of whether a flat she bought on England’s south coast qualified for the higher stamp duty on second homes. But her departure became inevitable after Sir Laurie Magnus found her failure to follow recommendations to seek specialist tax advice fell short of the standards expected of a minister.
Starmer and Rayner’s often turbulent relationship belied the importance of her role in government. She is popular in traditional Labour heartlands where Nigel Farage’s nationalist Reform UK is now making big inroads, and a voice of the soft left of the parliamentary party. She embodies a spirit of working-class aspiration at the heart of the Labour brand. The plain-speaking former union official provided a left-leaning counterbalance to the more centrist prime minister.