Angela Rayner fired as Labour gripped by
post-poll rancour
Questions grow on Keir Starmer’s leadership with
accusations of ‘cowardly avoidance of responsibility’
Michael
Savage and Toby Helm
Sat 8 May
2021 20.22 BST
Labour
chair Angela Rayner has been dramatically fired by Keir Starmer as a bitter row
erupted over the party’s disastrous performance in Thursday’s bumper set of
elections.
She was
blamed for her role in running the council and mayoral polls and the byelection
in Hartlepool, but her allies said she was never given control over campaigns
that were “run out of Starmer’s office”. As the chair of the campaign, her
supporters said she was being set up for the blame.
One
frontbencher said that blaming Rayner for the election results was “utterly
ridiculous”, after Starmer had explicitly accepted personal responsibility in a
statement on Friday.
Party
insiders said they believed MP Steve Reed would take over as chair. Reed is
close to Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, and Labour’s general
secretary, David Evans.
The move
came ahead of an anticipated reshuffle of the shadow cabinet early this week.
MPs were last night pointing out that Rayner, a former care assistant and union
rep originally from Stockport, was chosen for her role because of her appeal to
northern, working-class communities.
Former
shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the decision to remove Rayner as Labour’s
chair and campaigns chief was a “cowardly avoidance of responsibility”.
Meanwhile,
senior Labour figures blamed the election fiasco on a failure to understand how
Boris Johnson has changed the Tory party so it can appeal to working-class
voters, as questions mounted over Starmer’s leadership.
As the
postmortem continued, the re-elected mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham,
criticised the move to oust Rayner. “I can’t support this,” he said on Twitter.
Burnham
said on Saturday that he would entertain becoming leader of the Labour party
“in the distant future” but insisted that his mind was firmly fixed on his
second term as mayor. Starmer has been in office for just 13 months.
In the
aftermath of the latest election drubbing, Burnham told the Observer: “Labour
at a national level has lost its emotional bond with many people who were
former supporters and that sentiment is strongest in the parts of the north
that were previously most loyal to us.”
In a clear
criticism of the party’s national approach, Burnham added: “You don’t get it
back by operating an overly cautious form of politics nor by continuing to see
everything through the lens of Westminster.”
Asked on
Sky News whether he wanted to lead the party following reports he would be a
frontrunner to replace Starmer, Burnham said: “I’ve been elected as mayor of
Greater Manchester – that is where my focus is.”
Labour
losses in the Hartlepool byelection and in other red wall areas, where it hoped
to win back voters who deserted it at the 2019 general election, have left MPs
and party activists in a state of shock and despair.
Several
frontbenchers loyal to Starmer broke cover to say it had been an error to
regard Johnson’s party as “the same old Tories” as they had been under Margaret
Thatcher, when they had in fact been transformed into a high-spend party to
appeal to voters in former industrial areas behind the red wall.
One
frontbencher said: “I kept getting briefing notes telling me to say ‘same old
Tories’. The problem is that they are not the same old Tories. They are
different and we didn’t get that.”
The shadow
minister for the City, Pat McFadden, said: “We are not facing the Conservative
party as in Margaret Thatcher’s days. This is a high-spending Conservative
party which is promising to pump a lot of money into working-class towns and
cities and whether they can deliver or not we have to work out how to deal with
that.
“If we keep
making the same offer and say we got the timing wrong we are going to face more
nights like Thursday night.”
Wes
Streeting, the shadow schools minister, said the target Labour needed to attack
was now a different one, but the party’s tactics had not shifted to reflect
that.
“We are no
longer facing the same old Tories and if we continue to look like the same old
Labour party we will go on losing like the same old Labour party. We’ve got to
change and that means showing, not telling. On policy, on organisation and on
an optimistic vision for our country’s future.”
Clive
Lewis, a former frontbencher and MP for Norwich South, said: “To turn things
around Keir must ensure our movement is allowed to build an authentic policy
offer that matches the challenges facing the country.
“The middle
ground of British politics is a myth. Boris Johnson has proved that it is
wherever you make the case for it to be.
“This then
is a new phase of Toryism – neo-illiberalism if you will. One which combines
large state spending and market intervention with authoritarian and nationalist
instincts. The ‘same old Tories’ playbook simply won’t cut it.”
Frontbencher
Peter Kyle, MP for Hove, said: “During the pandemic we clearly overestimated
the attention paid to Labour’s positive changes and underestimated the appeal
of Johnson’s bumbling positivity during a campaign.
“His
high-spending populism has disrupted the political landscape and we need to
rethink our entire approach accordingly. We’re fighting the Tories we’ve got,
not the ones we want.”
Johnson
last night said there would be no letup in the Tories’ attempts to “level up”
the poorer parts of the country with the more prosperous.
“These
election results are an instruction to us to keep our focus on what matters:
more jobs and investment, better public services and levelling up opportunity
in every single community across the country.
“Many
people will have voted Conservative for the first time. From the Vale of Clwyd
to Harlow, from Cornwall to Dudley – and, of course, in Hartlepool.
“Voters
have put their trust in Conservative representatives, councillors and mayors
and we must deliver for them. We will have a laser-like focus on the people’s
priorities as we build back better from the pandemic. There will be no let-up
in levelling up.”
The shadow
cabinet and parliamentary Labour party will meet on Monday, with tensions
running high and factions on left and right blaming each other.
Some MPs
said they had been told that Peter Mandelson had been allowed to sign off party
lines during the campaign. Another insider said: “I hope Andy [Burnham] does
run.”
While
Starmer has vowed to make significant changes in response to the results, he
has not yet outlined them. It is understood that the pollster Deborah Mattinson
is poised to join the Labour leader’s team to oversee a strategy overhaul.
Having
already suffered heavy losses in the Hartlepool byelection and the Tees Valley
mayoralty, Labour also lost to Conservative Andy Street, who was re-elected as
mayor of the West Midlands, taking 54% of the vote after a second round of
counting. It was a significantly bigger victory than his first win in 2017.
However,
there was some good news for Labour, as Sadiq Khan won a second term as
London’s mayor. Khan beat the Conservative challenger Shaun Bailey by 55.2% to
44.8% in the runoff.
Burnham
also enjoyed a huge win as he was re-elected Greater Manchester mayor, taking
67% of the vote while Steve Rotheram comfortably secured a second term as
Liverpool city region mayor and Marvin Rees held Bristol after going to a
runoff against the Greens.
There was
also a Labour win in the West of England mayoral race for Dan Norris, while
Labour’s Nik Johnson was elected Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayor,
suggesting the party could be making progress in pro-remain areas that returned
a Tory MP at the 2019 election.
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