11.09.2025
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From freebies to stamp duty
The deputy leader was found guilty of violating the ministerial code, but the subsequent government reshuffle will fail in trying to out-compete Nigel Farage on anti-migrant rhetoric, writes Eddie Ford
So far, six people have entered the race to replace Angela Rayer as Labour’s deputy leader, and all of them female (even if Jess Phillips and Lisa Nandy decided to opt out). Bridget Phillipson, the current education secretary, has been widely touted as the frontrunner, as she is likely to be seen by MPs as No10’s de facto candidate and hence will secure much of the ‘payroll’ vote. Initial figures released by the Parliamentary Labour Party showed Phillipson leading the contest, Lucy Powell second and the others trailing quite a bit behind.
Giving us a slightly different picture, exclusive polling of Labour members for the LabourList by Survation shows that, after Phillipson, Emily Thornberry is the second most popular candidate - she has stated that “we’ve made mistakes” and has condensed her platform to: “Welfare. Gaza. Wealth tax. Changes to come”. However, she is a longstanding member of Labour Friends of Israel, who at the Balfour 100 banquet in 2017 strongly defended the country’s “right to exist” and said it “stands out as a beacon of freedom, equality and democracy, particularly in respect of women and LGBT communities, in a region where oppression, discrimination and inequality is too often the norm”. Sick words, given the continuing genocide in Gaza.
Hopefuls need the nominations of 80 MPs (20%), and those who reach the threshold must also receive nominations from at least 5% of constituency Labour parties, or about 30 in total, or at least three official party-affiliated bodies, of which at least two must be unions. This second stage will run from September 13-27, with the electronic ballot of party members - who must have been in the party for at least six months - taking place from October 8-24, and the result being announced on October 25.
One thing is for sure, the Socialist Campaign Group’s Bell Ribeiro-Addy will not get past stage one. Her intention is, though, not to replace Rayner. It is to become the recognised leader of the Labour left. Frankly, a fitting choice. She embodies the parliamentary left’s political and moral bankruptcy.
This “life-long socialist” followed the now standard route of the Labour career politician. Having cut her teeth in NUS politics, she worked as Diane Abbott’s chief-of-staff before successfully fighting the 2019 general election and becoming an MP. Jeremy Corbyn made her shadow minister of immigration.
Her political platform is little different from that chancer Thornbury: ‘Gaza. Welfare cuts. Winter fuel payments. Change’. Vacuous. Moreover, only a short time ago she was to be found on the bottom end of the government’s greasy pole. Till she was sacked, Ribeiro-Addy served as the PM’s trade envoy to Ghana - she is of Ghanaian descent. An unpaid role, but there are the generous expenses, not least for travel. But what the hell was this “life-long socialist” doing accepting a government post in the first place?
Anyway, the extremely tight timetable with just a couple of days to secure MPs’ nominations has been described as “the mother of all stitch-ups”, which seems accurate. In a display of control-freakery, the leadership is sidelining anyone even mildly ‘off message’ and evading discussion on Gaza, disability benefits cuts, winter fuel payments, etc. Keir Starmer is taking no chances.
Entitlement
This follows, of course, Angela Rayner being found guilty of violating the ministerial code by ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, who nonetheless said in his ruling that she had “acted with integrity and with a dedicated and exemplary commitment to public service” (like all upstanding members of the establishment). But he concluded in no uncertain terms, wearily shaking his head, that Rayner underpaid £40,000 in stamp duty on her Hove seaside flat.
In his slightly mournful handwritten response to her resignation letter, Starmer said that Rayner would “remain a major figure in our party” and “continue to fight for the causes you care so passionately about”. The Labour leader no doubt regrets her downfall, because he could always present her as an ‘authentic’ voice of the working class that legitimises his deeply anti-working class administration - the most rightwing Labour government we have ever had (which is saying something after the Tony Blair experience).
But the long and short of it is the fact that Rayner was caught bang to rights for claiming that she had received written tax advice, before completing her £800,000 purchase, saying she was entitled to pay the lower amount, as it was only property, when actually her conveyancer stated that they had not provided any such advice and completed her stamp duty return using the HMRC calculator based only on information provided by the deputy leader. So clearly her story does not add up.
Obviously Angela Rayner did not ask too many questions and ignored the advice she received - she turned a blind eye and broke the guidelines. Hardly corruption on a grand scale, true, but it still reeks of a grasping sense of entitlement. But how can anyone be surprised? Right from the beginning, we condemned the petty corruption of Starmer and his ministers - all the freebies, the fancy glasses, London accommodation, the holidays, the dresses, power suits, concert tickets, corporate boxes at football matches, personal shoppers, and so on.1 As for Rayner’s backstory of being from a humble background and getting pregnant at the early age of 16, you can to some extent understand why she would treasure her meteoric rise and new-found middle-class lifestyle. But she still had her snout in the trough like all the rest of them.
Yet it is doubtful whether it is the end of her career - we can expect the memoirs, high-profile interviews, TV appearances, a column in The Sun or Daily Mirror … and generally making pots of money on top of what she has already made. Frankly, her unique selling point as a professional northerner who liked to parade her origins was deeply off-putting - though Phillipson has an element of that too. Communists do not care about someone’s sociological origins: rather it is your class loyalty and who you are fighting for - which means that Rayner spectacularly fails the test. That is not changed by her longtime friendship with Rebecca Long-Bailey - once the great hope for the Labour left in her bid to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.2
Essentially, as we have seen countless times, bourgeois politicians are buyable - it comes with the territory. If you want to look at a particularly successful example, it is Tony Blair, of course, whose personal wealth is estimated to be between £30 million and £60 million.3 Where does he get all that from? Not from corruption while he was in office, though he did plenty of dodgy things, but afterwards basically selling the advantages he accumulated and the contacts he had made (Gordon Brown did the same, albeit not so successfully - selling his services to the highest bidder). In Blair’s case his institute is up to its neck in Donald Trump’s ‘Riveria’ plan to ‘resettle’ Palestinians to make way for a Greater Israel - ie, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Blair keeps talking about a two-state solution, like many other bourgeois politicians, but that is a lie and he knows it. As well as being buyable, bourgeois politicians are infinitely malleable when it comes to the truth.
Appease
Rayner’s resignation triggered a major government reshuffle - which must be fascinating if you are a Westminster journalist, given to endless speculation about who is rising in terms of junior ministers and all the rest of it. The hand of Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister’s chief of staff, has been seen across the reshuffle, and it obviously represents an even further move to the right. With the departure of Rayner, energy secretary Ed Miliband becomes one of the few cabinet members on the party’s extremely soggy soft ‘left’ still in post (apparently he was heavily pressurised to go, so the party can row back on its net-zero promises in a bid to attract Reform-minded voters).
The most significant development, at least when it comes to a shuffling at the top of the existing pack, is the moving of the odious Yvette Cooper - responsible for the Palestine Action ban - to the foreign office and her replacement as home secretary by Shabana Mahmood, not to mention making David Lammy deputy prime minister, justice secretary and lord chancellor. Mahmood is coming in as getting tough on migrants - as opposed to Cooper, who is seen in government circles as a bit of a soft touch (tell that to pro-Palestinian activists), and what you got from the new home secretary is the instant announcement that asylum-seekers will be put into disused or converted military barracks, not hotels - a matter which has become a rightwing cause célèbre.
One government source said “nothing is off the table” for Mahmood in her new brief - she previously signalled a willingness to look at the reform of the European Convention of Human Rights within domestic law, after it was confirmed on September 8 that more than 30,000 people had crossed the Channel in small boats so far in 2025. That is a record for this point in the year - something which Reform and the Tories have pounced on.
In her first official announcement as home secretary, Mahmood proposed cutting the number of visas granted to countries that delay or refuse returns of their citizens who have been deemed to have no right to remain in the UK, and in fact it was one of several proposals discussed at a meeting of the ‘Five Eyes’ countries (made up of the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Back in June, Sir Keir said he favoured a more “transactional” approach to the UK’s use of visas.4 On the ECHR, Mahmood declared that the “balance” between human rights and secure borders “isn’t in the right place at the moment” - it goes without saying that Reform has already pledged to leave the ECHR entirely, along with other international conventions it regards as preventing “mass deportations” - a wet fantasy seeking to ape Donald Trump and his ICE agency.
All these measures are designed to appease Reform, of course. The reality is that, if you look at the figures, what needs to be highlighted is not the illegal migrants that have crossed the Channel or come over by some other means, but the sheer number of migrants who entered the country directly after Brexit with the full connivance of Boris Johnson and then successive Tory prime ministers. But what you actually get amongst a swathe of the population is no distinction between illegal or legal migrants, or for that matter historically established migrants - we are, after all, in a wave of English/British chauvinist reaction. Quite obviously the Labour Party is feeding a toxic agenda, having the advantage of being in government, and being able to actually do something.
Nonetheless, there is no way that Shabana Mahmood, Sir Keir or any other minister is going to outshine Nigel Farage on that one. Their actions will only make him more popular, as he is clearly more consistent on this question.