I feel sad about Angela Rayner

[Neededa]

OK, I am left leaning so maybe I am already biased, BUT, I do feel sad that a woman who overcame early issues, who was “proper” working class, who didn’t speak the kings English, but rather with a proper local dialect, and achieved a high office without a single spoon in her working class mouth, has gone.

i do understand that many people will agree with what has happened. I would have been fuming if the story played out the way it had as a different party, and I understand that Angela had to go, BUT as a woman who believes in holding up other women, particularly those who aren’t born to certain families, or have expectations placed on them from word go, I do feel a bit sad this morning.

There was a working class woman in the House of Commons. A working class woman was the deputy prime minister of this country. It is not even 100 years since working class women could vote. I feel sad.

No, Deputy party leader.

Deputy Leader of the LP - she had 3 roles

The Deputy Leader role isn’t an appointable one. The NEC elects to it. Starmer could have a deputy leader and a deputy PM (which would be a bit bonkers) or Lammy could be a temporary appointment until the vote goes through.

Ah okay, thanks for clarifying @GabrielsOboe , @Blossomtoes and @Efacsen. I didn’t realise AR was also deputy leader of the Labour Party. I also got confused by Gabriel’s wording about AR’s seat being vacant as, to me, that suggests her constituency seat is vacant rather than the fact that a position she’d held is now vacant.

No problem.

The point is - Starmer could really do without it right now, but it does set up the rather tantalising prospect of some internecine warfare within the party.

Labour’s abject failure over the past 12 months has dramatically increased support for Reform. If Reform come to power at the next election, I will be blaming it on this shit show of a Labour government. So, no I don’t feel sad or sorry for Angela. She is partly responsible for this mess.

Starmer has now suffered the most ministerial resignations, outside government reshuffles, of any prime minister at the beginning of their tenure in almost 50 years...

Interesting observation by @derxa - though I don't know if there's enough in those extracts to conclude that Hugo Young was a snob, or indeed whether I am by cobbling them together. The biography is nearly 1000 pages long, so we'd need to read it all to make a fairer judgement. I haven't read the Charles Moore (Eton/Trinity Cambridge) biography, which you might have preferred. Feel free to post useful extracts if you have a copy!

My love for geeky historical detail is a bit OTT, but I wouldn't say I shared those values, just trying to describe them 😊

England is of course still very much a society stratified by class. But I'd guess that 'everyday' understanding of class has changed since Thatcher's youth and when she was coming up through the ranks.

We have much less awareness now of what it meant then to be raised the daughter of a Methodist local worthy; or just how well-read and disciplined young bluestockings were in the '30 and '40s.

Thornberry hates Starmer. He sacked her - well, passed over her.

And I doubt she forgets her grudges quickly. She got into a vicious fight with Caroline Flint after the 2019 election.

But Thornberry won’t make it. In the wake of Rayner’s disgrace they’ll elect some inoffensive party lackey.

(I used to like Caroline Flint. I’m sorry she’s out of politics now. She probably isn’t, mind.)

Has he? Johnson lost ten ministers in his first year after the 2019 election.

I haven’t read either biography but Thatcher had to put up with sneering from the elite all of her life. Even Willie Whitelaw said she wasn’t the sort of person one invites to dinner 🙄

Whereas Rayner has to put up with sneering from people who aren’t fit to tie her DMs.

Really? And her achievements are what?

Yes, Starmer has - that’s why I posted it.

Yep they’re paving the way.

"The Tory chair has agreed to pay a seven-figure sum to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to settle a tax dispute"

As you say, millions of pounds is exactly the same as 40 thousand.

And a Chancellor denying he'd done anything wrong, keeping the enquiry secret in contravention of the ministerial code, and claiming he was smeared is totally different.

How kind of you explain it.

My DM went to university just after the war. She won a bursary which funded her education. She also came from quite humble beginnings and a complicated home life. I salute her and all other women who went to university during that era.

Don’t be silly. He was just richer. And she was the shouty protestor against “one rule for them, and another for the rest of us”.

Sure, right Ange. 👍

I struggle to understand why Labour supporters can’t let go of Rayner, can’t accept that she has ‘gone’. Kind of disrespectful to the rest of the cabinet, no?

Unless, of course, they considered her the best of what Labour has to offer….

"He was just richer."

So the same? Or not the same?

Except for......?

She has been the queen of sneering that's why this is so hilarious.

Aren't fit to tie her DMs? .

Are you seriously defending Rayner by reference to other disgraced politicians?

No, I am objecting to "except for...."

I don’t understand. You want to refer to Zahawi. I’m saying that’s fair enough, they’re both disgraced wrong ‘uns. 🤷‍♀️

Exactly and at least he didn't barge around shouting scum at people.

Dodging tax is of course very bad regardless of the amount but it's Angie's <as Sky's Beth Rigby keeps calling her> utter intolerance of other peope who are just as bad as her that has made her look such a hypocrite.