Earlier this week, it was reported that Wes Streeting was preparing to challenge Keir Starmer for the top spot. As we said at the time, replacing Starmer with Streeting would be like swapping mud for dirt. Now, however, it seems a new challenger is approaching, and it’s one who isn’t just a more annoying copy of Starmer:
EXCLUSIVE: Angela Rayner is already offering Cabinet roles to MPs in exchange for their support, The Telegraph has been told.
Read more: https://t.co/LRuDnpoKZn pic.twitter.com/zriwTIdrh4
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) November 15, 2025
Angela Rayner returns
As reported by the Telegraph, Angela Rayner is reportedly offering Cabinet positions to MPs who pledge to support her. They say she’s joined the Tribune pressure group, which is a ‘soft left’ outfit of 70 MPs (apparently on track to hit 100). It’s noted that this is the “biggest caucus of Labour backbenchers”, and that it could be used as a “leadership vehicle” in the same way that Labour Together pushed Starmer into the top spot.
Rayner has denied the reports, but she would, wouldn’t she. While the Telegraph didn’t receive word from Rayner herself, a ‘source close to her’ said:
This is total rubbish and obviously false. Amidst all the stirring and silly games, Angela is focused on representing her local community and ensuring that the priorities she championed in Government are delivered in full.
Note that they said “the priorities she championed” rather than ‘the priorities of the government‘. This makes sense, because the workers’ rights proposals Rayner pushed for proved to be popular with voters, whereas Keir Starmer’s platform has been Digital ID and freezing old people:
Benefits that Rayner would have over Starmer or Streeting include:
- She’s one of the few Labour MPs who come across as a flesh-and-blood human being.
- The right-wing media hate her in a way which makes them overstep what they can get away with (i.e. they call Starmer ‘boring’ but they call her a ‘thick, working-class bint’).
- She doesn’t seem to think that politics is solely about straddling New Labour’s failed privatisation ideology as if it were the nuclear bomb from Dr Strangelove.
This isn’t to say Rayner doesn’t and won’t have problems, of course, with said issues including:
- She defended the wretched disability cuts which the government had to u-turn on.
- While she’s likely to win the support of the unions, her record on that front isn’t spotless.
- Rayner was embroiled in the donation scandals which marked the start of Starmer’s government.
Potentially, some of the above can be explained by the fact that she was in Starmer’s government, and to some extent she had to support him to receive backing for her own initiatives. We wouldn’t bet on that, however, and neither would others:
1/9
Time to post some of my Rayner’s greatest hits. To begin here’s her defending Israel at the height of the genocide pic.twitter.com/iqgJeYhO15
— Ashok Kumar |
(@broseph_stalin) September 5, 2025
— Ashok Kumar |
— Ashok Kumar |
— Ashok Kumar |
— Ashok Kumar |
The big problem
By far the greatest problem Angela Rayner will have is that she would be leading the Labour Party – a political operation which is filled with fifth-generation Tony Blair photocopies. As we saw in the Corbyn years, when a leader tries to push for remotely progressive policies, the MPs kick off. At the same time, it’s also the case that:
- A lot of these people have had the fight beaten out of them.
- It will be difficult for anyone to argue that Labour should be more right-wing given the failed Starmer experiment.
At this point, it seems that Starmer is on his way out no matter what. Regardless of who succeeds him, we’ll be here to make sure someone is shouting about the actual issues that the government needs to address.
Featured image via Number 10 (Flickr)
By Willem Moore
This post was originally published on Canary.