Angela Rayner has criticised what she calls a “poisonous tradition of cronyism” in a 1000-word assertion issued after this week’s native elections.
Rayner, who resigned as deputy prime minister in September 2025, has referred to as on the Labour Social gathering to “reside as much as our title: we have to be the celebration of working individuals.”
She additional warned that Labour was at risk of “turning into a celebration of the well-off, not working individuals.”
Rayner argued that the Peter Mandelson vetting debacle had uncovered a “poisonous tradition of cronyism”.
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She referred to as on the prime minister to “meet the second and set out the change our nation wants.”
The previous deputy prime minister additionally described the choice to dam Andy Burnham, the Higher Manchester mayor, from standing within the Gorton and Denton by-election as a “mistake.”
Learn Rayner’s assertion in full under.
Our celebration has suffered a historic defeat.
Many good Labour colleagues have misplaced their seats regardless of working arduous for these they represented. We’ve misplaced good Labour administrations and misplaced the possibility for extra.
What we’re doing isn’t working, and it wants to alter. This can be our final likelihood.
The Labour Social gathering should now reside as much as our title: we have to be the celebration of working individuals.
We’ve heard the identical on the doorstep as we’ve seen within the polls – the price of dwelling is the highest concern for voters of all events. Individuals have turned to populists and nationalists as a result of we’ve not completed sufficient to repair it.
Residing requirements are barely increased than they have been a decade and a half in the past. Individuals really feel hopeless – that the price of dwelling disaster won’t ever finish, and now they see oil and gasoline corporations use international instability to publish document income.
As soon as once more, odd individuals are paying the value for selections they didn’t make. It’s no surprise that throughout the UK, working individuals really feel the system is rigged towards them.
Issues will be so significantly better than this. Nations together with Spain and Canada have proven that economies can develop and other people can thrive when governments keep true to labour and social democratic values and put individuals first. We have to be taught from that.
In London, we misplaced younger individuals who worry they’ll by no means afford a house. In my patch and throughout the north, we misplaced working individuals whose wages are too low and prices too excessive. In Scotland and Wales, individuals don’t at the moment see Labour as the reply.
We’re at risk of turning into a celebration of the well-off, not working individuals.
The Peter Mandelson scandal confirmed a poisonous tradition of cronyism.
Selections like chopping winter gasoline allowance simply weren’t what individuals anticipated from a Labour authorities.
For too lengthy, successive governments have allowed wealth and energy to pay attention on the prime with out a plan to make sure the advantages of financial development are shared pretty. The result’s an economic system that doesn’t work for almost all, with wealth concentrated in too few arms. This stage of inequality, alongside squeezed dwelling requirements, is the result of a mannequin constructed on deregulation, privatisation, and trickle-down economics.
However we’ve the possibility to repair this.
We’d like instant motion to chop prices for households and put a refund into the on a regular basis economic system. This may be completed inside the present fiscal guidelines, by making certain those that profit from the disaster contribute extra so that everybody can thrive.
Our Employment Rights Act was simply step one in our plan to Make Work Pay. Now’s the time to take the following steps, beginning with a Honest Pay Settlement in social care – however not ending there. A rising minimal wage should go alongside our programme to get younger individuals into work.
The funding we secured in social and reasonably priced housing ought to now unleash a constructing increase that advantages British enterprise and employees. We should double down on renters’ reform and present leaseholders our motion on tackling floor rents and expenses was only a first step to ending freehold for good.
Our devolution revolution has begun, however is nowhere close to completed.
Giving mayors powers to remodel planning and licensing can increase native enterprise and good development, within the pursuits of native individuals. They have to go alongside financial powers and public companies.
Boosting neighborhood possession and stopping the sell-off of native property from pubs to playgrounds will put energy again in native arms, serving to restore the satisfaction they really feel within the locations they reside.
We should go additional on planning reforms, to construct the colleges, hospitals, roads and infrastructure the nation must develop.
We needs to be unafraid to advertise new types of public, neighborhood and cooperative possession throughout the board. Buses and trains being introduced again into public arms can now function for the general public good, at costs passengers can afford.
Thames Water is an iconic failure of privatisation, which resonates for a similar causes. Individuals are rightly sick of bonuses for bosses who ship nothing however increased payments. We should face down calls for that the general public pay the value of personal failure.
We should create good jobs that pay respectable wages by making certain defence funding features a safe manufacturing base. Use our home constructing programme to spice up development, spend money on the inexperienced economic system, backing SMEs by reforming enterprise charges and rising help to revive our excessive streets and native economies, increase the minimal wage and get younger individuals into work.
After which there may be politics itself, placing energy again into individuals’s arms in order that they’re shaping the choices that impression them. We should sort out the influx of dodgy cash in our politics – one thing that Nigel Farage, who took 5 million kilos in a secret private reward from an offshore crypto baron, won’t ever do. We should make politics work for odd individuals.
We are able to solely show we imply it by placing the widespread curiosity forward of factionalism.
That is greater than personalities, however it’s time to acknowledge that blocking Andy Burnham was a mistake. We should present we perceive the dimensions of change the second requires – meaning bringing our greatest gamers into Parliament – and embracing the kind of agenda that has been profitable at an area stage, slightly than reaching again to an agenda and politics that has failed individuals.
These are the fights we have to have, and the change in path we have to see. Coverage tweaks won’t repair the basic challenges going through our nation. This authorities wants, at tempo, to place measures in place that make individuals’s lives tangibly higher, whereas fixing the foundations of a system rigged towards them.
The Prime Minister should now meet the second and set out the change our nation wants.
Change our financial agenda to prioritise making individuals higher off, change how we run our celebration so that each one voices are listened to, and alter how we do politics.
Labour exists to make working individuals higher off. That isn’t occurring quick sufficient, and it wants to alter — now.
