Sir Keir Starmer is so concerned about a leadership challenge from Angela Rayner that he has offered her the Education Secretary’s job, it was claimed on Saturday.
Allies of Ms Rayner say the Prime Minister is desperately trying to persuade his former deputy – who resigned in September after a scandal over her tax affairs – to return to his Cabinet in a bid to shore up his position.
Sir Keir’s aides are said to have privately suggested she could be handed back her old job of Housing Secretary, or even given the education brief currently held by Bridget Phillipson, in a reshuffle next year.
The revelation comes after it emerged that allies of Health Secretary Wes Streeting are pressing Ms Rayner to sign up to a ‘joint ticket’ for the Labour leadership – dubbed ‘Wangela’ – with the offer of a return to the Deputy Prime Minister position if she threw her support behind him.
But sources said Ms Rayner is resisting both approaches – and is instead preparing her own bid for No 10 after what will likely be catastrophic local election results for Labour in May.
Ms Rayner’s supporters believe she will be cleared by a HMRC inquiry, which, it is claimed, will find she made an ‘inadvertent error’ over the stamp duty payment on her £800,000 apartment.
Such a ruling could mean she avoids having to pay a £12,000 fine and possibly from even having to repay the full amount of outstanding tax. It would also herald her return to frontline politics and, potentially, pave the way for her own leadership challenge.
Labour has been plunged into a frenzy of plot rumours after Rachel Reeves’ disastrous Budget and amid dire polling figures showing the party averaging 18 per cent of the vote – far below Nigel Farage’s Reform on 27 per cent.
It emerged that allies of Health Secretary Wes Streeting (left) were pressing Ms Rayner (right) to sign up to a ‘joint ticket’ for the Labour leadership – dubbed ‘Wangela’
It was also claimed that Sir Keir Starmer was so concerned about a leadership challenge from Angela Rayner (pictured) that he offered her the Education Secretary’s job
Despite having resigned after it was revealed she underpaid about £40,000 in stamp duty on a three-bedroom seaside flat in Hove, East Sussex, Ms Rayner remains hugely popular among Left-wing Labour activists and MPs.
Sir Keir last month heaped praise on his former deputy, gushing that she was the ‘best example ever’ of social mobility and that she remains ‘a big voice in the Labour movement’. He added: ‘Do I want Angela back at some stage? Yes, absolutely.’
But Ms Rayner is said to remain furious at Downing Street for not doing more to back her during the tax controversy – in contrast to the support given to Ms Reeves after the Daily Mail revealed she had broken the law by renting out her home without the correct licence. In that case, the PM said there was no need for further action over the Chancellor’s ‘inadvertent’ error.
‘She’s going to be completely cleared [by HMRC],’ one ally of Ms Rayner told the MoS. ‘And that leaves the path clear for her to come back. Starmer’s terrified of her, and has been offering her several jobs. But at the moment she’s rejecting them. She wants to be free to develop her own agenda from outside the Cabinet.’
Rumours swirled before Sir Keir’s reshuffle in September that Ms Phillipson would be sacked. She was left in her post but later suggested she had been the victim of sexist briefings by No 10.
Mr Streeting last month denied being on manoeuvres, but Labour sources have reportedly claimed that his allies have made ‘huge overtures’ to Ms Rayner’.
Former Tory Cabinet minister Lord Gove yesterday said all the manoeuvring was ‘a sure sign of decline for the Prime Minister’. He added that Ms Rayner is in a ‘better position’ than Mr Streeting and would not ‘meekly accept’ him as her ‘route back to respectability’.
Sources close to Ms Rayner dismissed talk of leadership plotting and said she was unaware of the outcome of the HMRC inquiry.
No 10 sources denied any job offer had been made to Ms Rayner but pointed out that the PM had openly said he wanted her back in the Cabinet ‘at some stage’.
A spokesman for Mr Streeting has dismissed claims that his allies had approached Ms Rayner as a ‘silly season’ story.
The HMRC said that it could not comment on individuals due to taxpayer confidentiality law, and could neither confirm nor deny investigations.
