Rayner, Housing, Labour and 'Lammies' – The Aftermath

Looks like we may have another strong candidate for this year's Lammy of the Year award….

Sadly, this one is a bit more serious in its implications than our current front runner for the title - our (now ex-)FS’s recent fishing misdemeanour….and it's far less entertaining, to boot.

Rayner seems to have led a very complex life as far as her own personal housing is concerned. The latest high-profile issue, which has now led to her political undoing (for now at least) was whether she was entitled to designate her newly acquired flat in Hove as her main residence in her dealings with HMRC, having told the local council there that it wasn’t. And this appears to be just the tip of the iceberg....

Devoted followers of our (now ex-)deputy PM's antics will recall a previous row, again about housing, which surfaced in April 2024. At the time, she actually went as far as promising to resign if action were taken against her over the matter. The police investigation into her affairs stemmed from a complaint made by a local constituency MP at the time, James Daly, that she had falsely declared a second property she owned as her main residence (not the one in Hove which she only purchased recently), while still living in the house now owned outright by her husband. The complication that caused all the trouble that came back to haunt her recently, was that the property was included in a trust she set up in favour of her disabled son after they divorced. This all happened before she became an MP, and no further action was taken at the time, but it showed, at best, a marked tendency to bend the rules, if not actually break them, when it came to her housing arrangements.

In these times when we're all struggling to cope with an ever-increasing tax burden, given Rayner's role as housing minister, not to mention deputy PM, this, and the latest furore over a similar issue, did at least question her suitability for the role. 

Ministers are normally expected to appear 'squeaky clean' in their affairs, particularly when it comes to their own specialist area of government. Admittedly, Rayner's rather chequered personal life and marital relations will have contributed to the complexity of her housing arrangements. On the other hand, she did have plenty of access to the highest level of legal advice throughout the tenure of her government role, including when she purchased her Hove flat,  so there was little excuse for not fully understanding the rules and their implications. She was, after all, nominally in overall charge of the UK's housing sector, so will have had as much expert advice as anyone to call upon, and did need to know the rules pertaining to house ownership, (as well as something about housing !) to do her job effectively.

What then should Starmer as her 'boss' have done about it ? 

The renewed ‘stink’ the affair created in the media provided yet another stick for Reform and the Tories to beat him and his beleaguered government with, and his first mistake was to declare the usual ‘full confidence’ in Rayner in the hope that it would all go away. Any sensible PM would at the first sign of trouble simply have removed the offending minister on grounds of being 'unfit for role'. The irony is that Starmer himself already has plenty of form for this, having dispatched, or forced the exit of, no less than three of his female ministers already under similar circumstances, having vigorously displayed 'full confidence' in them shortly beforehand.... 

You have to ask at this point: If it was so obvious that Rayner was not suitable for the job, why did Starmer appoint her as a minister in the first place ? The answer, as we'll consider in more depth later is: Labour Party policy. Deputy Leader is an elected post and not in Starmer's gift.

Despite his protests to the contrary, Starmer had been 'itching' to get rid of Rayner and her hard left tendencies since he came to power - it was she, in league with Diane Abbot, that stopped him purging the candidate list of Momentum sympathisers before the election in June. He knew Rayner, however, would be a tough nut for him to crack, because of the nature of her role, and he effectively 'chickened out' of that particular conflict, deciding to wait his chance....

What, then, were his options when the 'brown stuff' started to fly, and who started the witch hunt in the first place ?

As deputy PM responsible for taking up the reins of office when Starmer is absent (pretty frequently nowadays on his 'I'm a statesman, get me out of here' diplomatic jaunts) he couldn't reasonably exclude Rayner entirely from her erstwhile cabinet role while things were developing. A pre-emptive early cabinet reshuffle was of course a possibility, with Rayner shunted sideways into another,  less high-profile, ministerial role, or even one without portfolio. He could, of course, also have gone for the nuclear option of replacing her as deputy PM straight away, as this was in his gift. 

But this would have been a dangerous course for Starmer personally, given Rayner’s strong support from the left and the Unions. Although she probably has lost her slot as the hard left's 'anointed one’, she will still be important in their campaign as a back-bencher if and when Momentum finally stage their predicted vengeful coup against Starmer, and she could even be put forward by the left as PM herself. It's more likely, given the history, that' she'll be offered a top job under a new leftist candidate (Andy Burnham seems to be warming up on the sidelines as we speak, ad there are rumours already of a challenge by one or more of the other hopefuls).

Yet another female ministerial departure without 'good cause' would also have damaged Starmer's credibility as a manager even further, given his established propensity for 'losing' them from his cabinet ranks at regular intervals.

He was therefore faced with something of a dilemma. His popularity generally was (and still is) at rock bottom, with Reform around 8 points ahead of Labour in the opinion polls at the time and still rising, and the Greens/Corbyn threatening to hijack a significant proportion of the leftist vote. Even the Tories are beginning to look a bit more credible now they've had a year to work out where they went wrong under Sunak and how to return to true conservative values. The best he could possibly hope for in the next election if he actually survives until 2029 is a hung parliament, or a wafer thin majority. 

Starmer is universally hated by the left for his radical reform of the party in the run up to the election, and the attempts to purge them completely from the candidates list before the poll, and the Party may yet lose a substantial number of his existing back benchers to the 'new Corbynites' as I call them before this parliament is out unless he is ousted (this assumes the new Corbynites ever overcome their current internal squabbling and actually become a party at all)

Thus Starmer couldn't have removed Rayner from her deputy PM role without 'due cause' without thoroughly upsetting the political apple cart. Her role as deputy leader of the Labour party was an elected one which he could not touch, since it is enshrined in Labour's constitution. It is also traditionally backed by Labour’s union paymasters as their ‘handle on the levers of power’. As already discussed, any attempt by Starmer to unseat Rayner from the deputy PM role would have gone against a party tradition whereby the party and parliamentary roles should coincide. It would also have been met by strong union opposition, despite her recent spat with Unite over benefit reductions, which actually went as far as  her suspension from said union. She therefore had to resign herself to vacating the post when the tax evasion storm hit.

Starmer, predictably, shied away from this potential controversy when the issue first surfaced and initially endorsed Rayner, stressing her rise to high office despite her difficult upbringing and recent marital problems as a rather pathetic 'rags to riches success story' in an attempt to muster the sympathy vote. 

What then actually happened behind the scenes, we'll probably never know, but the media attention didn't go away, and more damning evidence quickly surfaced to the effect that Rayner hadn't sought the advice she should have on Stamp Duty liability. Starmer then quickly took the opportuity to refer her for an 'ethical review'. By then it seemed obvious to most of us that Rayner was for the chop. Not a particularly difficult thing for Starmer to achieve at this point, either - a quick word to the wise for the ethical reviewer and the deed would be done. It's no coincidence that the review was undertaken and reported on within a couple of days (almost uheard of for a UK.Gov review) to ensure any further damage was limited.

Although this is of course conjecture, the conspiracy theorists are already putting this whole affair forward as a stitch-up by Starmer and his advisors behind the scenes to get rid of a 'troublesome priest'. Given Rayner's apparent lack of guile in her tax affairs, it would have been easy for a senior adviser (I wonder who that might have been!) to identify this as a vulnerability, particularly since she already had 'form' for making such errors. The speed with which he implemented his reshuffle after Rayner's resignation was also suspicious, and suggested it had all been planned well in advance. 

Do I believe this ?....I couldn't possibly comment, of course, and will happily leave it to the reader to make their own judgement, given Labour's past record on political skulduggery.....

Whether Starmer will survive this particular debacle (planned or otherwise) in the eyes of an increasingly skeptical electorate and Party, time will tell. The latest, and pretty radical, cabinet reshuffle reeks of panic. The back-benchers (bless them!) will now have even more power to restrain him on anything they don't like, rendering him effectively as a leader 'on sufferance only'. As discussed in a previous blog, this phenomenon is one of the few benefits of our current political system, since it ensures that a seriously wayward leadership team can't get away with anything the back-benchers feel is not beneficial to their re-election prospects - and there are plenty of them in that frame of mind this time round.

And what of Rayner's fate ? 

She remains MP for Ashton under Lyme, and now that she has retreated to the back benches, she is of course much freer to spearhead revolts against the PM. To retain any credibility she will need to distance herself from her boyfriend’s activities working for a political lobbying group whose client received £280,000 from the government. She's unlikely to retain her present seat at the next election, if the reaction of some of her constituents to recent events is anything to go by, so won't have that restraint.  Some media outlets have suggested her retreat from her northern homeland to Hove was driven by a plan to move to a 'safer' Labour seat, her current one being under serious threat by Reform. Not much chance of that strategy working now, I suspect. Whether any seats can now be seen as 'safe' for Labour candidates is another matter.

While it's tempting to afford her some sympathy for her current predicament, there are limits. By the nature of things, those at the top always have 'further to fall' than the rest of us when they transgress. The obviously devious nature of her personal housing shenanigans, and the potential lobbying implications of a close confidant, with its conflict of interest implications, didn't help her cause either.

Interesting times ahead, indeed….Farage will be rubbing his hands with glee…again. 

What price Labour's flagship '1.5M new houses in this parliament' policy now without Angela to champion it ?....especially since the UK seems to have stopped making the cement we need to build them all with...

Postscript: What next for Labour ?

The cabinet reshuffle, as already discussed,  was suspiciously hasty, and reeked of a conspiracy by No 10. Whether Starmer's new 'attack dog' Mahmood in her role as as Home Secretary will actually manage to do anything about the boats, while still fettered by Starmer's precious ECHR, only time will tell, although she has taken a sensible first step in threatening visa restrictions on those countries who refuse to take back ay of their citizens found to have enetered UK illegally. Such a major bout of 'musical ministries' will only serve to disrupt any progress individual incumbents might have made in recent months, and leave their civil servants having to 're-adapt' to yet another newbie boss. I suspect it will just mean more of the same fire-fighting activity, but at a slightly slower pace.

The big news, of course, apart from the extensive nature of the reshuffle itself, is the PM's appointment of David Lammy as his deputy. 

This move could at first sight be interpreted as yet another lammy (with a small 'l') on Starmer's part, but may actually have provided us with a rare glimpse of good sense, given the now ex-FS's propensity for 'dropping lammies' from a great height onto the world stage. 

Starmer may feel safer with him 'under his eye' at home and more to the point, well away from foreign dignitaries...Lammy was, after all, one of Trump's fiercest critic pre-the 2024 election, and Starmer was constantly at pains as PM to avoid his accident-prone FS ruining his carefully crafted relationship with Trump by 'dropping a massive lammy' 'au Zalensky' all over the Oval Office carpet. 

Lammy's new portfolio ministry, Justice, has always been seen as something of a poisoned chalice, and will certainly keep his nose safely to the grindstone. More lammies yet to come, though, I suspect, and plenty to keep the Dead Ringers team busy for their next series. 

You can't keep a good lammy down, as they say.....

First published 31.8.25; revised 23.9.25