445. Starmer's Deputy PM Quits: The Return of Chaos in British Politics?

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Welcome to Arestis Politics Emergency Pod.

We pressed the button.

Why?

Because Angela Reiner, the Deputy Prime minister, has resigned.

The ethics advisor has ruled that whilst he thinks that Angela Reiner behaved with integrity and was very open and transparent with him, that nonetheless her handling of her tax affairs did not meet the standards of the ministerial code and Kier Starmer was in part elected because he said he would strengthen the standards.

So Rory, initial reaction and then we'll dig in a bit deeper.

Yeah.

Well, I think the sort of big, big framing to remind people is that Angela Reiner is a very, very unusual, powerful, heavyweight in the Labour setup.

She was Deputy Prime Minister.

She was the Housing Secretary, and therefore she was in charge of probably the biggest part of what the government has been promising, which is sorting out the housing crisis and building hundreds of thousands homes.

Maybe not the biggest part, but definitely a central plank of their entire growth strategy and growth is everything.

And obviously you and I, Alistair, have been going off and up to Leeds and other places to talk to housing associations, house builders.

A lot of that was about Angela Rainer, Angela Rainer's energy, Angela Rainer pushing ahead with planning.

So I think it matters for the Labour Party.

It matters for the government.

It matters specifically for this drive on housing.

But apart from that, she's also a very, very unusual figure in the Labour front bench, and a labour front bench that can seem a little bit cautious, a little bit managerial, a little bit dry.

She is this very

much more larger-than-life, relaxed, outspoken, terrific communicator, as we found when we did our interview on leading.

Over to you.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think we should put that out actually, because I mean, lots of people will be, lots of our listeners and viewers will have seen and heard it, but some might not.

And it was a

pretty remarkable interview, I think.

And I think it was one of the reasons, because she hadn't given many really in-depth interviews why there was a sense of a changing perception around her.

Look, I'll be absolutely frank about it.

I really like Angela Rayner.

I think her heart's in the right place.

I think she's somebody that brings a lot to the Labour Party and up till now to the Labour government.

If you look at the housing, the workers' right, the renters' bill, she's been in charge of the devolution bill that was just,

I think, was being debated just before Parliament went away, or might even have been last week.

And, you know,

she's a serious person.

She's a figure in politics, the likes of which I think we need more rather than fewer.

And ultimately, I think this is one of those situations where the personal and the political have collided.

I don't know how she kind of manages her private life and how she manages her approach to things like tax and that sort of thing.

You get the sense over the last few days as this has kind of unraveled and as the press has kind of piled on and the Telegraph in particular has been really pushing and digging up new details, you kept feeling she was one step away from perhaps being forced out.

I actually think that she's got so much kind of reputational strength in the bank, particularly in the Labour Party bank, that maybe when Kierstama went out the other day and absolutely 100% defended her without maybe knowing the full facts, then that is one of the reasons why.

But he's been very clear that the ethics advisor having had the power strengthened and ministers having the ability to self-refer,

that frankly, if you read the last couple of paragraphs,

it's clear that he felt she had to go.

Well, just again, to try to summarize for people what seems to have happened,

she bought a house in a flat in Hove, in a rather a nice building, 50 miles from London, overlooking the sea.

And it was £800,000.

And I think this immediately started probably journalists saying, what's going on here?

Because Hove is not her constituency and it's not London where she works.

So what's she doing buying?

a house in Hove.

And that may be to do with her personal life, you know, maybe her partners, her new partners based in Hove.

But that's something immediately that I, as a former politician, can completely see where the problem emerges from the start before you get onto tax.

If I had very visibly suddenly bought a home when I was the member of parliament for Penrith and the border and it was neither in London nor in Cumbria, people would have said, what on earth is this thing, right?

And I would have had to explain.

And presumably she would have to say, well, obviously, I live in my constituency and I work in London and this thing,

she would have to say to her constituents, I guess, is not my primary residence.

And that, of course, led journalists then to say, well, wait a sec, we all know that when you buy a house, you have to pay much more stamp duty if it's a second home compared to if it's your first home.

So did you buy it as a second home or first home?

And turns out she bought it effectively as a second home and tempting for her because that would have saved her £40,000

buying the house, which after tax, quite a large chunk of her.

annual income.

And then I think she was probably stuck between a rock and a hard place.

And one of the questions which probably she would have been asked, is, how on earth can you claim this is your primary home if it's not your constituency and it's not London?

Just to say, by the way, my phone is pinging away with, I mean, I'm hesitant because I don't know 100%, but what we call usually reliable sources that Lucy Powell and Ian Murray are leaving the cabinet.

So whether

this is leading to a wider reshuffle, it would seem that Keir Starmer was planning maybe a bit later.

So it's brought that forward as well.

Can I just interrupt that for a second?

If that is is happening,

why?

Why would you move Lucy Palney and Murray on the same day as you've lost Sanchez Lorena?

Because that isn't something

in my time in Conservative governments, we wouldn't have done.

We often lost, you know, Amber Rudd to a resignation, we lost Matt Hancock to a resignation, but they didn't reshuffle at the same time.

I've haven't really heard of that.

Well, no,

I am not surprised by this because I think he's had that mini, what we call, was called the mini reshuffle within the Downing Street operation, and I think has been planning a reshuffle of sorts.

I don't think a big one and he certainly I don't think expected well he didn't expect for Andrea Reiner to be leaving so I suspect he's doing it to try to you know frankly it's a bad day for the Labour Party it's a bad day for the Labour government and at another stage in a few weeks days or weeks time he was going to be doing this he's probably thinking let's just get it all out there um but this is

can i just come back because again i'm trying to answer the logic is the counter argument not to say to you come on alistair actually we could could make our reshuffle of Lucy Palney and Murray into a positive story?

Why don't we delay it for a couple of weeks when we've got a bit of oxygen and then we can really pitch the new people coming in?

Yeah, but I suspect this won't be the last of it.

I suspect this is going on now.

And I think the point about people are getting very kind of, I see on social media and some of the media I saw at lunchtime are getting on very excited about, you know, the depth, who will be the new deputy prime minister.

The first thing to say is it's not a kind of, it's not a constitutional position and um i so it doesn't have to have a deputy prime minister the labour party does have to have a deputy leader and the deputy leader has to be elected by the party so that's going to lead to a leadership election they'll want to get it out not least because the labour party doesn't isn't sort of rolling with cash at the moment they'll want to get it over with other thought fairly quickly um whether it can be done by the conference or not i don't know um and and so that that's but that's going to create um a debate about where the Labour government is, where the Labour Party is.

Now, the bookmakers are saying they're sort of rolling out the names, you know, West Streeting, Yvette Cooper, Pat McFadden, Shabana, Mahmood.

There will be a very strong feeling, I think, within the Labour Party.

We're losing a woman and we should have a woman.

I think that there'll be, but there will be men who will put their name forward.

I've got no doubt about that.

And then the question that Kiers Tharma is going to get as, well, will your deputy leader automatically become the deputy prime minister?

My advice to him would be the answer to that should be no.

And why is that?

Because you just don't know what the Labour Party is going to do.

And so I think he should just hold fire on that one.

And then the broader reshuffle.

I mean, of course, one of the factors that led to this being even worse for Angela Rainey than it would have been had it been any other member of the cabinet is the fact that she's in charge of housing, as you say.

And there's another kind of little thing maybe worth bearing about with the budget coming up and the budget in very, very difficult economic circumstances where Rachel Reeves has some tough choices.

One of the choices that is being floated around is this new property tax to replace stamp duty.

Now, again, my advice would be if you think that is the right thing to do and you are planning it anyway, do it and don't change it just because of this.

But it's just sort of these things have a habit of catching you out in all sorts of unintended directions.

So a couple of small things.

One is that's an interesting one, whether there's some special advisor

possibly in number 10 saying, oh, maybe we shouldn't do the stamp duty thing because the Daily Mail or the Telegraph will have a field day making jokes about you've abolished stamp duty because Angie didn't pay it.

But the bigger thing is I was interested when you were talking about who the runners and riders were for the deputy leader, that the figures that you mentioned were streeting if etc.

I was giving you the bookmakers list.

Right, but those seem to be more on the sort of right wing of the Labour Party, unless I'm wrong.

And presumably, actually, there's a real chance that often the deputy leader might come from the left of the party as a bit of a protest vote against the centre.

Well, you've got this really interesting thing going on, of course, because there's Jeremy McCorby and Zara Sultana with their new party.

I mean, there's a load of nonsense floating around that Angela Raine is going to join Jeremy Corbyn's party, etc.

I think you can forget that.

We can forget that, but that indicates that some people see her as being slightly more on the left than people like West Reating, and that she was the voice, maybe more of the left.

Well, she was definitely...

I mean, look, West Streeting comes from, as we know from when we talked to him on leading he comes from a pretty working class background but Andrea Rayna's sort of life story and her background story is so kind of special as people who will listen to our interview with her would would discover um that I think she does have a I think she does have a particularly strong working class voice I think that and I think that's why a lot of people like her it's very interesting watching all the comments flooding in there's a sort of mix of a lot of support for her because they think she's a character but an awful lot of people saying listen if you're in there and in the past you've called for people to resign and you're the housing person and you don't pay tax properly and you're a bit careless about it, then you know it's on your own head.

Okay, can I just I want to get back to that in a second because I think it's a really interesting question about her resignation.

But before we get on to that, just help me understand or listeners understand a little bit more about the sort of left-right splits within the Labour Party.

Because it's not just her class background, it's also that there's a a sense that Keir Starmer represents more of a kind of Blairite,

more right wing of the Labour Party vision, is that right?

And obviously that's why

Corbyn and Zara Sultana would say that, wouldn't they?

I mean, that's why they left and set off.

And there's been fights about welfare fights.

So

the Corbyn faction

would see Starma as being more on the right, right?

Well, they do.

But of course, I think one of the reasons why, you know,

one of the reasons why they perhaps dislike Kir as much as they do, and maybe even more than Tony, is because Tony was always that out there modernising new labor person.

Whereas, of course, what a lot of the Corbynes say is that to become leader, Keir put out a very pretty left-wing perspective, which he's since changed.

And I think, you know, I think, to be frank, a lot of the anger that Corbyn and Zahra Zoltana direct towards Kir is actually as much about Gaza as anything else and their feeling that he's not been strong enough

against Israel.

Look, I'd be very surprised, although they'll think about it carefully, but Corbyn having gone,

you've still got this sort of group of MPs, John McDonnell, Richard Bergen, the people that

are very much in that Corbyn wing of the Labour Party, whether they feel that they will have to put somebody up.

for the deputy leadership.

But the thing is, it's quite a high hurdle.

You have to get, I think with the current mathematics, you're going to need about 80 MPs to want to back you.

That was a move that

was made a while back to stop kind of, you know, fringe candidates putting their names forward.

But this will definitely be

a way by which we're going to see tested the real politics of the new parliamentary Labour Party.

And I'm just one final point, Ray.

I also wonder whether on this reshuffle,

if he is going to be doing something a bit bigger, I wonder whether he won't be not necessarily at cabinet level, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see some of the new younger MPs being brought into further down the ranks, because I think there are some really good ones that the public, frankly, just don't even know about.

Just again, I mean, this is maybe too much inside baseball, but

Michael Foote was the deputy leader of the Labour Party in the 70s.

And then when Foote came into power, it was Dennis Healy, I guess, then Roy Hattersley, Margaret Beckett.

John Prescott, who on the surface might seem like a little bit of a sort of version of Angela Reiner in terms of his role within the body.

But it's what I'm seeing with some of these names that at some times the deputy leader has been used to balance the leader and bring in a slightly different wing of the party at a different tone of voice.

And

not just the party, but also the public.

I mean, one of the, look, you know, I think that John Prescott, as I've said to you many times before, I think was a really good guy.

That's not a universal opinion for those who work with John, but I liked it, I always got on very well with John.

And it wasn't just that he represented, he would,

you know, he coined the phrase about new labor being traditional values in a modern setting.

Well, John was very much the guy about the traditional values, and Tony was very much the guy about the modern setting, and that kind of worked together.

And I do think with Angela, if you think about some of the things that people say about Keir, you know, a bit technocratic,

not a kind of natural communicator.

You can't see him sort of, you know, hanging out on the sofa on loose women, really sort of opening up about

himself.

That's all the stuff that Andrew Rainer does do and has done and does it very, very well.

So I think there is a sense of them being a team.

Look, they've had their ups and downs.

There was a period, if you remember, when there was all sorts of briefing against Anja, and, you know,

was she going to get the boot and all this sort of stuff.

But no,

I think they've come to a pretty good modus operandi.

And I think if you read Kier's letter, and it's quite, I don't think I've ever seen a handwritten resignation acceptance letter and you know, having having drafted a few in my time, but I thought that was a sort of sense of genuine sadness and fondness for her.

And I think within it, within it,

it wasn't sort of basically saying go away and serve your punishment and come back, but I could see Angela Reyna coming back.

into government at the time.

That's why I was a little bit surprised that she also decided to resign as deputy leader.

Yeah, because many people thought she could remain as deputy leader of the Labour Party and just leave her ministerial position.

It's become increasingly common for people to come back after resignations.

And I don't know how common that was.

I mean, of course, Peter Mandelson famously would resign and come back a couple of times.

But in the old days, if you go back to Profumo and things, once people resign, that was usually the end.

They didn't return.

But when I was in office, it became more and more common.

So, for example, people maybe remember Amber Rudd, who was the home secretary, resigned over the Windrush

affair.

And then they very much felt they owed her.

And they brought her back a few months later in a reshuffle towards the end of that year.

When Matt Hancock resigned, he certainly thought, you remember he resigned for breaking COVID and who can forget being caught on camera

in his office.

His expectation, I think, is that Boris Johnson was going to bring him back again.

And it didn't happen.

But certainly during my 10 or so years in, the convention was, and this probably would apply to Angela Reina, that unless what she'd done was very extreme, I mean, another example would be Robert Jenrick,

went.

Now, I can't quite remember whether he technically resigned or was

fired, but there was a scandal to do with him sitting next to Richard Desmond,

the publisher of juicy magazines and owner of newspapers and

tower blocks.

And then, of course, he came back and now he's a counter for leadership.

I don't think the resignation offence was sitting next to him.

was the it was the financial discussions that the there that thereby ensued i think just talking of the tories i think i think it's interesting to uh to sort of put this in this bigger picture of what else is going on in politics so

the the the the news today was probably

going to be much more focused on Nigel Farage reform conference.

You know, it seems to me the entire mass ranks of the British media and the dozens of BBC correspondents are all reporting on Angela Rayner, it seems to me, from Birmingham, because they're up for a Nigel Farage.

Nigel Farage, this is what we discussed the other day, being ultimately about news, actually brought his speech forward by three hours so that he could give his first commentary on Angela Reiner.

And meanwhile, Kemi Badenock, the leader of the Tory Party, she put out a statement.

I thought both of them kind of misread things a bit.

Farage, because it just plays into this idea that he's actually just a commentator and a media guy rather than a kind of potential leader of the country, who seemed to me had nothing to say about the future of the country, apart from the fact I gave up when he introduced Nadine Doris as the great sort of you know story of the day.

The great reveal, yeah, exactly.

And the reveal, just for listeners who've not been following the ins and outs, this is Nadine Doris, who was a Conservative MP, great friend of Boris Johnson, right-wing, the Tory Party, has now announced that she's joining reform to absolutely nobody's surprise.

Yeah, and in his introduction, sort of bigging her up, not only was she a working-class woman, made good and a great author, but she'd also been on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, and thereby made that wonderful sort of link between celebrity and politics, which, of course, you and I think is what is wrong with our politics, not what's right.

But then, but then

Kemi Badenlock,

she's not very good at tone, is she?

I mean, she was, it was a really kind of sort of quite nasty,

uh, very aggressive, and then onto where I would have gone straight away, onto, you know, and the government's not doing a very good job on this, that.

But I, because

I actually do think that when

somebody like Angela Rainer goes, yes, there's loads of people who just think, you know, big public figure, she didn't pay her tax, gets everything she deserves.

But then I think there's something, she writes in her resignation letter.

And I believe this, and I've spoken to her a little bit about it in the past, is that, you know, she does have a very complicated family situation and one of her children who's got really serious disabilities and so forth.

And she,

you know, and I saw as well that somebody's graffited on her house,

the one in Hove, and all this, all this sort of stuff.

So she actually uses the word unbearable, that the pressure on her family was becoming unbearable.

Now, some people say, oh, well, you know, you deserve what you get.

But I was at an event yesterday, and I know you get this all the time as well, where

people were saying, you know, they were actually, it was quite an interesting debate, but the thing was, do we get the politicians we deserve?

Because, and I did the thing I always do, I asked this audience of about 200 people, how many of you have ever thought about going to politics?

Not one single person put their hand up.

So I think that is another thing that the debate will go to that.

Just on this, this is a really important issue, isn't it?

Because I think ever since we started the podcast and you read a draft of my book, you've always felt that I'm a bit down on politics.

And I think in my defence, I would say that actually politics has changed since you were in, and that actually the experience of being a member of Parliament, particularly of being a woman, is really, really unpleasant.

I mean, really, really unpleasant.

And social media is a great deal of that.

But just the sort of, but also the sort of general sense of contempt.

I mean, when you started covering politics, of course, there's a big tradition of the British mocking politicians, and it's a good thing, and spitting image was out there, and everyone thought they were ridiculous.

But

the number of people in opinion polls showing absolute contempt, rage, politics has broken, they're all liars, etc., has got so extreme now.

And it's created an atmosphere where, you know, day in, day out, you're basically being treated all the time as though you're an incompetent criminal.

You're being given absolutely no credit for what you've done.

I mean, one of the amazing things is whenever we interview one of these my former colleagues from the Conservative cabinets, you know, could be Sergeant Javid, could be

Jeremy Hunt,

people will say, oh, you know, they weren't as bad as I thought.

They were quite nice.

They were quite nice.

Quite a nice guy.

But that's because they have been, all they've seen of them for kind of 15 years is

so much abuse that the discovery that they're actually remotely human are actually able to speak.

You see, that's why, in an ideal world, I think that Ed Davies response to this would maybe register more than it.

than it has done.

Ed Davy has basically been very sympathetic because he said, I really understand how difficult it is when you're you're trying to be a public person run a public life uh in a very high profile job while you're caring for a member of your family who's got really really you know huge needs and um look i do think there's something about you know i think i think the look to be honestly frank i think it's one of the reasons that people like our podcast is we try not to talk to each other like that and although one or two of these politicians can trigger me to go back into the sort of rage mode um in the main try to talk about about politicians like that as well.

Try to understand their motivations rather than just question them all the time.

But I think the

politics of this,

I think politicians ought to just sort of maybe have a think about whether this is where they all want to go.

Maybe some of them do.

But I don't think most of them do.

And also,

I mean, it is,

there is, of course, this horrible irony which she's got caught in, which she was absolutely brutal to Jeremy Hunt on his stamp duty on buying houses, which I at the time thought was unnecessary and unfair.

What he'd done was perfectly legal and within the rules.

And she went on this massive attack.

So if they did it to each other less, they'd get it back less.

I never did that.

I mean, in 10 years in politics, I don't think you can find an example of me ever going after people in that kind of way.

So I'd like to say that.

What did you have to hide?

What did you have to hide?

What were you worried about coming up?

Probably you're absolutely right.

I must have been half conscious that if I did this to other people, they might eventually end up doing it.

Well, we had exactly the same thing back

in the mid-90s when we had the whole back to basics thing where John Major makes a speech, let's go back to basics.

He wasn't talking about let's stop sort of, you know,

having off with our secretaries, but he was, but that was where the media took it and that's where we sort of followed a bit.

I don't think we overdid it, but Tony used to really worry about that.

He said, listen, let the media do that stuff, but let's not pile in too much because, you know, let's be frank, we know there are people on our side, etc., etc.

Interesting, though, there's a really interesting question, though, here

called Gary B.

I imagine it's Gary Barlow.

How do we start to hold right-wing MPs to account for their actions when they simply don't care, have no ethics or standards?

It's not a level playing field.

So you mentioned Jeremy Hunt.

I mean, the media did not go after Jeremy Hunt.

Labour might have tried to get it up in lights because it was like, you know, rich member of cabinet makes himself richer,

even if within the rule.

I can't remember.

In defense, he didn't do anything as bad as Angela Reynolds.

So I think it's the like for like that's the interesting conversation.

What did he do, though?

What did he do?

No, she was just saying that

there's a rule for property developers and people who own a lot of houses where I think they pay less in tax.

And because he had a company buying 10 houses, he paid less in tax.

Right, but

there was no suggestion of impropriety, absolutely no suggestion that he in any way broke any rules.

But I do think that

there is a massive double standard.

So there's a story in the papers today that Nigel Farage has got one of these sort of private service companies into which he pours all his speaking agency stuff and

his GB News stuff and all the rest of it.

And that, let's be absolutely frank, because I was advised I could do that when I left Downing Street.

Why don't you do this?

No, I don't want to do that because I think it's a bit dodgy.

So I didn't.

And it's cost us a lot of money down the years because we pay

pretty high tax rates.

He doesn't even get asked about it.

So there is a total double standard.

So salt, the thing is, it doesn't need to be a level playing field.

Labor just needs to follow the damn rules and be squeaky clean.

And

that is something I think is important, which is that I sensed as a politician, I think most of us did, that we would be under a spotlight and held to very, very high standards.

And therefore, we couldn't be too cute.

Every single time I did something, obviously I put it through a daily mail test.

and I tried to check.

And, you know, one time

I was

flown back somebody paid for my plane ticket i was very scrupulous about repaying it so i wouldn't get an undersect which is why i got very annoyed with people like boris johnson taking all these freebies and stuff and why i never took i never took paid trips but it's not just me ed ed miliband was much better than me he during the expenses scandal came out as a sort of expenses saint and why was that presumably because he really felt or or or or my my great uh hero the beast of bolsover dennis skinner famous he wouldn't take a cup of coffee from a journalist.

So there is,

it's not that you can't.

I think I got Dennis a cup of coffee every now and then.

I'm not sure about that.

I'll settle up later.

Oh, no, it's free, you know, whatever.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage, I see, is advertising gold bullion.

You can see these huge big signs that you can buy Nigel as gold.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've got to say, we don't want to talk about him too much today, but because it's his big day.

But

I've got to say, I wasn't impressed by his speech.

I know the people in there would just sort of say, this is wonderful, it's Nigel Frage, etc.

But as this, I, I, the point about double standards, though, I think that the more what it seems to me, I was talking to somebody the other day, a minister, um, who said he felt one of the problems the government's got at the moment is that our entire system is designed for here's the government in parliament, here's the opposition, and that's where the big battle goes.

Okay, but at the moment, actually, Kemi Bade not gets her six questions at Prime Minister's questions, but actually both the Conservatives and Labour are kind of directing their attention over there to this little gaggle of four MPs who occasionally turn up.

Now, that being the case, I think that I sense with Farage that he's in danger of overreach, and that once the scrutiny does pile on.

So, for example, I didn't listen to all, but Fiona told me that Richard Tice was on the Today programme this morning.

She said, That guy is just terrible.

Why can't Labour just take him apart?

He's terrible.

He talks absolute rubbish.

He leaves lines open left, right, and centre.

So, I think that there's got to be a kind of upping of the game against reform and what you do with the troys i don't know because they're obviously i mean i i was at the cricket yesterday i had my one day's holiday my one day off of the year rory no work at all i went to the cricket and uh

yeah

and found and found another good interview for leading hopefully from one of the celebrity guests the cricket oh we're not allowed to talk about that rory wait till that

we did have a former interview leading interviewee uh in the next box which was theresa may the the former Prime Minister.

But Chris Evans of the Telegraph, the editor of The Telegraph, was there.

And it's quite interesting talking to him because

he was sort of explaining to me how it used to be that these Tories were never, they were never off the phone, sort of badgering the Telegraph and getting them to do this and having ideas and wanting to write stuff and that.

And he basically said, apart from Generate, nobody seems to bother with us anymore.

It's almost like they've given up.

Well, Farage has not given up.

So one of the reasons that I think you're seeing Kemi Badenock responding in this slightly unbalanced fashion is she's on tilt.

Every week she is going through people, and presumably most of our listeners may not be reading the mail on the telegraph, but my goodness, the abuse that she's getting every week from what should be her natural supporters.

It's unbelievable.

So if you look at yesterday's Mail on Telegraph, there's a big article by Quentin Lett saying she completely failed to land any blows on Angela Raynor.

She just missed the point.

Then there's huge articles in the Telegraph quoting senior Tories in the party saying she's useless.

She's got to go.

Then you've got Robert Schrims, even in the FT writing articles saying Kemi Badenox simply hasn't managed to produce a vision.

She hasn't got any sense where she's going.

So

she's coming out of these battles

in Prime Minister's questions where every time she's getting really poor reviews from her colleagues in the right-wing press and and she's lurching around.

So, you know, on Wednesday, she tries to think I'm going to be statesman-like and focus on Labour's competence on the economy.

And then everyone says, well, you missed an open goal on Andrew Rainer.

So now she goes out and Andrew Rainer.

And so I think that's one of the problems there.

Listen,

there's a point from Afon Kuma here.

Fundamentally, any fiddling just reminds the public that MPs seem wealthier than the average person.

I think that is important to understand here, which is that there is a huge amount of resentment.

And it doesn't really matter whether you are John Prescott, who came from quite a modest background, or Angela Rainer, who came from a very, very poor background.

The delight with which the public embraces the idea that they've all got their snouts in the trough, they're all richer than us, where the hell did she get the money from for that house

is really intense, isn't it?

But I guess has always been like that, or is it getting worse?

No,

I think people think that

if you're a very, very poorly paid

member of the public doing a kind of minimum wage job, then you think MPs are very, very well paid and they get allowances.

And of course, don't forget, we've still got the kind of whole expenses scandal.

You mentioned Ed Miliband there, but I bet that's the first time our listeners have known that story.

Dennis Skinner was another one who had no trouble with his expenses because he really

didn't claim much.

Whereas, you know, lots and lots and lots of MPs, some went to prison.

So I, and then, and yes, then we were talking the day about the government in Singapore and the fact that their ministers get over a million dollars a year.

And and Singaporeans seem to like the fact that they have really clever smart people uh running the running the country Rory I've got to I've I've got to read this one out Francesca Melilo Villis which sounds like a it's an amazing name Francesca Melilo Villis um and I w but I wonder if it's actually Peter Mandelson under a false name because it says Peter Mandelson is one of the finest politicians in the UK

he's like our Mario Draghi they should lead Europe together Thank you, Francesca.

No, I know that's real.

That's a real

moment.

Mandelson and Mario Draghi is a great combination.

Well, that brings us to a more serious point, actually, for a second.

So people who aren't absolutely on top of this, Mario Draghi is very much, and as is Peter Mandelson, the epitome of the sort of 90s technocratic, neoliberal, economic, centrist, consensus, European Commission, this kind of vision of the world.

And actually, my suspicion is that the problem that Kirstama faces, if we move to the kind of big picture here, as you were suggesting at the beginning, is that Angela Reiner is exactly what his government is lacking.

It feels very, very managerial.

It feels very cautious.

It feels like, and I felt this when we were interviewing Bridget Phillipson and when we were interviewing Rachel Reeves, that they fundamentally at some level just believed that all they needed to do was get rid of the Tories, bring in people who were good-hearted and competent, and everything would be fine.

And we're not in in that age, we're in an age of populism where people want

very bold ideas, they want very authentic communication, they want much bigger personalities.

And she was almost the only person that can provide that because I'm afraid, you know, for all their merits, Rachel Reeves and Yvette Cooper are not going to provide that for her.

Alex Deacon here, Keir should be worried about the Greens politically with the local elections soon.

Bringing in a left-winger as his deputy might help, ignite the base a little, perhaps a soft,

I think that means soft left-winger, soft left-winger like Helen Hayes.

Dip tube, our politics have become American, complete joke.

I sort of thought that a bit when I saw Farage coming onto the stage, all these sort of sort of fireworks going off and all that, all that sort of stuff.

There is the other, the story that may happen, of course, which is on the reinter stamp duties, of course, whether whether she ends up being fined as well by HMRLC, which again will

take that.

It's also, I think, I mean,

I'm afraid there is a strong chance she will because um

this is

this thing that she did is something that almost anybody buying a second home is tempted to do because it makes a huge difference if you can claim that the home that you're buying is your primary residence or only second residence and i think the tax man is very very aware that they are losing many many millions of pounds a year through other people doing this.

So making an example of her hitting this hard, I think has huge implications for the way in which they manage this stuff across country because it's very difficult to prove.

You know, what is your first home?

What's your second home?

And obviously the lawyer thought she could get away with it.

Well, that's what she says anyway.

There's a commenter here, Roy, agreeing with you.

H.

Vetzer, Vesta.

Miss Rayna seemed to be the human face of this cabinet.

Now it's all robots, robots.

The Trance Lab, Angela, will be back one day, potentially as Prime Minister.

Interesting perspective here.

Simon Goodwin, this story explodes the myth that this is a meritocratic society.

The right-wing media and politicians could not cope with a working-class woman made good.

Meanwhile, the Tofts get a free pass.

There is something there.

I think a lot of the commentary about Angela Reiner has been about her accent, about the way she dresses, about the sort of, you know,

almost like she sort of overdoes the telling of

the story.

And, you know, that's one reason why I do feel.

I mean, it's still the most working-class cabinet we've ever had,

if you define it by sort of education and where they went to school.

But, you know,

I think it's a real, real shame that she's gone.

Final thing then, if Kier Sama is genuinely doing a reshuffle, Alistair,

here is my attempt to disagree agreeably before we wrap this up, which is I think he's making a big mistake wrapping it in to the story around Angela Reina.

He thinks by doing so he can take the pressure off the Angela Reina story.

But I think he's losing a huge opportunity.

This is the first major reshuffle that he's done since he's been Prime Minister.

He has been an underwhelming prime minister.

His net popularity rating is terrible.

Growth is not going the way that he wanted.

Debt is not going the way that he wanted.

He desperately needs an opportunity to reset and demonstrate to the public that it's going to be different, that he gets it.

He gets that people think Britain is broken, that politics broke, the economy broke, and that it needs radical reform.

And the chance to do it is to take a deep breath and do a real day around the reshuffle, explaining what that reshuffle is and explaining how that that achieves objectives.

No,

I think these reshuffles get hundreds of thousands.

Can I just say, if the Today programme phone me one more time, I will bloody well shoot them and I'll never come on their program again.

They should know that Rory and I are doing a live, okay?

So Kirsty, that's the fifth bloody call and I'm fed up with it.

Right, sorry about that.

But let me, Rory, millions of words, hundreds of thousands of words get written about reshuffles.

And ultimately, they don't matter.

What matters is the direction of the government.

The government has had a big knock today, and it's, you know, it'll take a little while to get over it.

Conference and the budget, to my mind, the Labour Party conference and the budget.

If the Labour government has not by then got a very clear track and a very clear strategy and confidence that they're going to is going to work, then I think they've got real, real problems.

By the way, breaking news, and God, I hope this one's right, but my source has been proved right every step of the way so far.

Yvette Cooper out.

Yvette Cooper out.

Well, that is really big news and maybe bigger news than than Angela Rayna.

Replaced by Shabana Mahmood.

Okay, well maybe, well, that's the more interesting question, whether that's inspiring.

But Yvette Cooper's right there in the question of the boats, migration, home office, police, arrest of people.

She's right in the centre of the culture war.

And the question, I guess, there is, did she have the clear values, the clear communication style to navigate the most difficult issue in British politics?

I mean, she is what Farage is after, isn't it?

That's what he's doing.

He's doing immigration, freedom of speech, police arrests.

It's all home office stuff.

So you need someone at the heart of the home office who can really tell that story.

You need a David Blunkett figure, don't you?

I've just heard somebody else say, more rage, please.

More rage, please.

Okay, very rich.

Of course, more rage.

Okay.

Right, last one.

Let's have one quick one each, Rory.

Well,

Farage China wants Sam.

This is an absolute collapse.

Interesting.

I mean, I'm a bit worried about that.

I'm a bit worried that if you let this story get away from itself and get muddled up on the reshuffle, and people are not very excited by if it happens, Shobana Mahmoud replacing Yvette Cooper, then actually the whole thing weakens Starmer rather than strengthening it.

Yeah, but Rory, people don't when people don't get excited about reshuffles.

When's the last time they got excited?

Look, the political class got very, very, very excited this morning.

Oh, Angela Rain is out.

I'm not saying, listen, it's a big story.

I'm not saying not, and it's bad for the government.

There's no way around that.

But I think the idea that you get sort of excited

about reshuffles,

what people want from their government is a government that makes the country better and delivers on the things it said it would.

I guess if the Yvette Cooper out is true, and apologies to her if it's not, and she's just sort of jumped out of her skin as somebody's gone into her office and said, Ah, Campbell says you'd be sad.

If that is right, then I guess that is Kirstama, as you say, saying, look,

this is the big thing that we set our stall out on.

Smash the gangs, et cetera.

It's not going as I want it to.

I seen that.

I think Shabana Mahumud and Justice has done a good job.

Let's see if she can do this.

Okay.

Well, Alistair, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Resist the Today programme.

And

don't do the Today programme.

What have you got to say, Alistair, that you've not shared with us

and the wonderful restless politics team that are listening to you?

Keep it exclusive.

Thank you all very much for listening.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.