Starmer resets after Rayner row, but Labour turmoil is a gift for Reform
6 September 2025 Share Save Laura Kuenssberg Presenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg Share Save
BBC
Welcome to the weird world of UK politics 2025. The TV presenter Jeremy Kyle announces to a huge crowd of Nigel Farage supporters at Reform UK's party conference that David Lammy is the new number two in government and they boo, panto-style. And there's a YouTube video of the (now former) deputy prime minister dancing in a tracksuit and chunky gold chain waving wads of cash that's been watched more than 1.5m times. These might both sound like parodies, but only the video of Angela Rayner rapping "How Many Homes Can Rayner Buy" was a joke. And what was planned as No 10's "get back in charge week" has been blown up by a row you couldn't make up – the housing secretary in trouble for not paying tens of thousands of pounds of tax on her expensive new house. Her exit pushed the button on a chunky shakeup of Sir Keir Starmer's team. The start of this political season has been wild.
Arron Chown/ PA Both Rayner's team and No 10 felt she had to go
In the end, 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. It was she who often led the charge against the succession of Conservatives who got into trouble over their own complicated financial arrangements, hurling accusations of arrogance and greed on a fairly regular basis. She was the shoutier end of Starmer's so called "Mr Rules" approach, a serious belief that government had to be washed clean of its tawdry image after multiple scandals and Boris Johnson's, ahem, flexible attitude to the normal rules. She portrayed herself as a loud and proud champion of ordinary people looking at the worst Westminster behaviour in disgust.
Jane Barlow/ PA Rayner had styled herself as something of a sleaze-buster
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 Sir Keir said so many times – to be competent, with clean heels. For the government's number two to have messed up her tax affairs undermines faith in ministers' ability. As one MP put it, "it's not even a rookie error, it's 40,000 smackers of oversight". And for such a prominent politician to lose their job over property dealings that many of the public couldn't imagine being able to afford gives the impression, again, that politicians live in a different world. "There's just the smell test," a Labour insider said.
Chris Jackson / PA Angela Rayner, Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves all came under fire for accepting permitted freebies
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