The Rayner Coup and a January Election
Will Keir follow Rishi's footsteps?
Angela Rayner will soon be cleared of the charges against her, this paves the way for a direct leadership challenge to Sir Keir Starmer K.C, Rayner has every reason to make this challenge out of spite but once she does, it will only become rational for Wes Streeting to join in and provide that sense of a credible alternative. This is the scenario being planned for by ‘soft Left’ figures, hence the rise of pleading headlines in left-wing outlets.
The first thing which strikes me on reporting information like this, before any analysis incumbent on the Journalist becomes possible, is how do people like this even exist? I’m not joking. There is. Somewhere in the world, a living, breathing, mentally normal adult human being who seriously believes there exists a qualitative difference between ‘Angela Rayner’ and ‘Sir Keir Starmer.’
There exist a ‘team’ of about four people who have bet their entire economic trajectory in life on this difference existing. There exists an industry of many hundreds who must, for the sake of their livelihood, pretend that there exists something called ‘the Labour left’ independent of ‘Labour’ with its own ideology the public recognise as such.
Needless to say, from the perspective of Labour, this decision makes no sense. The slimmest chance Labour have of, forget winning the next election, preventing Reform from establishing a generational right-wing consensus which buries every regressive achievement of the past 30 years forever, lies in presenting a united front, muddying on and relying on Reform’s bad comms turning the voters off.
Nobody, dear SPAD, perceives ‘Angela Rayner’ as at all different from Keir Starmer. Nobody outside of a tiny minority of people who work in politics see the fantastically corrupt Mrs Rayner as ‘working class’ by any meaningful metric. People don’t hate Keir Starmer because he’s a lawyer, or because he’s ‘too sensible’; Starmer is one of the most colourfully ideological figures to hold the office of P.M.
They hate him because he is objectively a very corrupt officeholder and because he has ideas which people increasingly see to have failed, yet refuses to give them up.
An attempted Rayner coup will destroy what is left of Labour. Therefore, the natural question is this, why doesn’t Keir follow the lead of Rishi in 2024 and call a surprise election?