Starmer criticised over Rayner sacking as reshuffle of team looms
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was last night reshuffling his shadow cabinet team as the fallout over the party’s dismal election performance continues.
Sir Keir has come under fire after opting to sack his deputy, Angela Rayner, from her role as party chairwoman and national campaign co-ordinator on Saturday, with Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham warning him that it was “wrong”.
But the Opposition leader will look to reshape his top team further as he looks to reverse the party’s downward spiral in England.
The former director of public prosecutions has also hired Gordon Brown’s former chief pollster Deborah Mattinson – who has written a book about why Labour lost the so-called “red wall” seats at the 2019 general election – as director of strategy.
It comes after Labour received a drubbing in some parts of England, losing control of a host of councils and suffering defeat at the hands of the Conservatives in the Hartlepool by-election – the first time the North East constituency has gone blue since its inception in 1974.
The sacking of Ms Rayner signals cracks at the top of the party, with rows over who was to blame for the election strategy that saw losses in former industrial areas that have traditionally supported Labour.
Although Labour sources were keen to stress that Ms Rayner – a former social care worker who hails from Stockport in the North West – would “continue to play a senior role” in Sir Keir’s team, prominent figures in the party have spoken out against the decision to remove her as chairwoman.
Mr Burnham – tipped as a potential successor to Sir Keir after winning a thumping majority to secure a second term as Labour mayor of Greater Manchester – tweeted: “I can’t support this. This is straightforwardly wrong if it’s true.”
Members of former leader Jeremy Corbyn’s team, from the left of the party, were among those to criticise the move to “scapegoat” Ms Rayner.
Former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott called it “baffling”, while John Mcdonnell labelled it a “huge mistake”.
Mr Mcdonnell, a former shadow chancellor, told the BBC’S Andrew Marr Show: “When the leader of the party on Friday said he takes responsibility for the election result in Hartlepool in particular and then scapegoats Angela Rayner, I think many of us feel that is unfair, particularly as we all know actually that Keir’s style of leadership is that his office controls everything. It is very centralised and he controlled the campaign.”
Ms Rayner has held a number of high-profile positions in her relatively short time on the green benches, firstly during Mr Corbyn’s premiership.
She was first elected in 2015. Less than a year after taking the Ashton-underlyne seat she was made shadow minister for pensions in January 2016, before moving to the women and equalities brief that June.
By July 2016, she was shadow education secretary, a role that she would hold until Sir Keir replaced Mr Corbyn at the top of the party in April 2020.