Angela Rayner: No 10 officials guilty of ‘self-harm' by briefing against ministers

The Guardian

4 days ago

Angela Rayner has hit back at anonymous No 10 officials who have briefed against senior cabinet ministers in recent months, warning them they are committing 'self-harm'.
The deputy prime minister launched an outspoken defence of herself and other colleagues – often women – who have found themselves the subject of negative headlines in recent months, with several being tipped for the sack at a future reshuffle.
Speaking to the Guardian's Politics Weekly podcast, Rayner reflected on an occasionally turbulent first year in power and admitted to occasional frustrations at the way in which some Labour ministers have been criticised.
'Sometimes there are briefings and I don't know where these alleged sources are and who is the person that is saying this,' she said. 'That can be quite frustrating, because people will say it's No 10's briefing or it's a source from No 10. But in reality, it's like: 'Well, who said that?'
'We've had these briefings that my colleagues – Bridget [Phillipson, the education secretary], Lisa [Nandy, the culture secretary] … [and] I am being marginalised. I'm like, 'Where is that coming from?''
She added: 'It's not a good idea to do that, and it wouldn't be helpful to No 10 to do that – it's not in No 10's interest to brief that. So when anonymous sources are doing that, it's a matter of self-harm. When they do that, it's not the reality of how we work as a cabinet and how our colleagues conduct themselves.'
Rayner's comments come after a difficult first year for Labour, which has been marked by achievements in her own policy areas but also friction at senior levels of government and within the parliamentary Labour party.
While Rayner has been able to pass the employment rights bill in the Commons, make changes to the care system and secure more investment for social housing, other pledges have proved more difficult, such as delivering the highest economic growth in the G7.
Reports have suggested that several senior ministers are in Downing Street's crosshairs for what would be Keir Starmer's first reshuffle as prime minister. Some expected Starmer to make ministerial changes before the summer recess, but he decided not to and allies say he does not intend to in the autumn either.
Reports earlier this year suggested Nandy and Phillipson would be moved out of their roles, prompting complaints from allies of the education secretary about 'sexist briefings' against senior Labour women. Nandy told the cabinet afterwards that the briefings were 'unacceptable', while Starmer is understood to have subsequently assured both ministers that their jobs are safe.
Cabinet tensions are not the only internal difficulties the prime minister and his deputy have had to deal with in their first year.
Ministers found it increasingly difficult to persuade backbench colleagues to vote with the government on controversial legislation, culminating in a major rebellion on benefits cuts that only ended when ministers gutted their own bill.
Rayner led the negotiations for the government with senior rebels, and told the Guardian she believed Labour MPs would need to be listened to more carefully in future.
'There wasn't enough work done, in terms of listening and responding to what [MPs] were saying,' she said. 'I felt that our colleagues felt that they didn't get the opportunity to be engaged in that process as much as they wanted.'
She added that some of the welfare rebellion had been caused by the government's inability to explain that it was trying to slow the rise in the cost of benefits rather than reduce it in real terms.
'Welfare is going up and it's going up a lot,' she said. 'So there was never a cut to welfare, it's flattening the curve of how much welfare is bringing people into the system at the moment. I don't think we articulated that.'
She added: 'Our values, our Labour values, I think they got lost in the messaging. So there are some real clear lessons for us about how we introduce what we're saying, how we articulate that and then how we drive that through the parliamentary process.'
Rayner acknowledged frustrations felt among the electorate about Labour's first year in power, which she said were driven in part by voters' desperation for rapid change.
'The challenge, if I reflect on the last 12 months, is that the appetite for change is so instant,' she said. 'People want it, they're so frustrated. They really want to see that change. And the cogs of government don't enable you to do the big bang – 'Hey, tomorrow we're gonna do this' – and it instantly changes your life.
'Digging out some of the ingrained poverty that we've got in this country, giving people opportunity, turning our economy around – these are things that can't be done overnight, but we've set the seeds now to hopefully make sure that we get that national renewal.
'But I think the pace of change is frustrating for people.'
She added that she was particularly proud of reforms that gave young people leaving care greater access to social housing. 'I felt we had a responsibility to give them that extra bit of support,' she said.
But she said she remained concern about the pace at which housing developers were replacing cladding and other building materials in the wake of the Grenfell disaster. 'Thousands of people are in buildings at the moment that need remediation and I go to sleep at night and think, you know, God forbid something like that happens.'