Times article suggesting Rayner is a shoo-in for PM within months - please god no

[teawamutu]

Hopefully this link will work:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/27184a3f-e513-49a6-871d-bc8c71fa7804?shareToken=1740daa659156e3945fd8e025dbf6d22

She signed every anti-women motion. She said she'd save a bench in the Commons for Liam/’Lily' fucking Madigan. She's pointlessly fighty and I'd bet perfectly happy to try to change the Equality Act. At the very least she'd allow FWS to be undermined.

Talk me down and explain why this either won't happen or won't be a disaster, wise FWRers, please!

Too 'right wing' for the backbenchers and unions maybe, but not for much of the electorate, I suggest. These are the people who still despise Tony Blair, in spite of him talking sense on most issues.

And Starmer making comments how he would like her to return to the cabinet and misses working with her

😂the saying keep your friends close and your enemies closer comes to mind

Labour just can't be trusted not to self destruct

She's the idiot who wanted to give full dismissal protection from day one of a job. Clueless.

Mahmood alone could not drag the party to the right, and I doubt that Labour will be electable for a function of 14 years after this lot.

Lucy Powell? She's Midas in reverse.

I think she'd have to cut bensfits, I don't think she's keen on taxation.

Dan Jarvis, from what I've seen of him, would make a good PM.
Don't think he's interested though.

Reviving this because I'm seeing more and more coverage presenting her as Starmer's most likely successor, and getting more and more alarmed at the idea of having a PM actively working to cancel all the gains we've fought so hard for.

Former women politicians, such as Mo Mowlem and Shirley Williams, must be spinning in their graves, when they see the standard of women politicians nowadays.

I heard a pundit on a podcast say that she stood a good chance of replacing him and a shiver went down my spine. I noticed she's sticking the knife in, she's claiming she told Two Tier not to make Mandelson ambassador, so she's definitely making a bid for it. If she becomes PM everything we fear will come to pass, it's time to get drunk and stay drunk. 🤯

She hasn’t sorted out her tax issues yet. She might angle herself as the anti-Starmer but she won’t be popular with the electorate, not only because of her behaviour (her abrasive nature as well as her dodgy tax affairs) but because she’ll have been parachuted in. No one voted for her in an election and if they called one I think she’d lose against Badenoch, especially as the Tories have allowed their political trash to take itself to Reform.

They're not. They're mostly 'unreconstructed activists' as an article commented this week (sorry, don't remember which), with the kind of thinking that if you're not Like Them they don't want your vote and you probably shouldn't be allowed to vote anyway.

That Starmer is still clinging on, wildly unpopular and incapable, says a great deal about anyone really capable of taking over from him. Rayner would go down with the general public like a bucket of cold sick after her tax incident. Streeting looks like an indecisive mess who can't handle hard decisions due to the Streeting Experiment going ahead, and Phillipson is reaching ten months of 'thinking' without being able to do anything on a judgment by the Supreme Court. Largely, yes, because the Labour Party don't want to have to follow the law, and they make decisions, even in a crisis like Mandelson, somewhat slower than a glacier. They're barely two years in and in a worse mess than the Tories were at the point they came out.

I believe Rayner is still under investigation so, I would have thought, unable to make a move at the moment?

I still quite rate Streeting, but in most ways rate Shabana Mahmood far more - but the chances that her own backbenchers and the unions would vote for her is unlikely.

I would be surprised if there are any leadership bids before May, because I assume they want KS to take the fall when Labour tank in the local elections.

Much is made of Angela Raynor's working class credentials, but what evidence is there that this makes her popular with the general public (as opposed to the Labour membership)? I think she is tainted because of the freebies scandal and her tax affairs so is viewed as just as self-serving as the rest of them.

It would be the nail in the coffin of the Labour Party in power and a national embarrassment.

This is a very worrying possibility, yet you can see why it might happen:

1. Rayner is a woman, and the party knows how bad it looks that it's never had a female leader.
2. She has no association with Mandelson, and apparently warned Starmer against appointing him.
3. She's been out of office for a few months which means the various bits of dirt currently flying around won't stick to her.

I had assumed that Streeting was the most likely person to succeed Starmer, but he's associated with Mandelson, which has to count against him.

But her political judgement is hugely questionable. I will never forget her telling Lily Madigan that she would keep the green benches warm for him, or forgive her for signing the pledge to throw gender-critical women out of the party.

or forgive her for signing the pledge to throw gender-critical women out of the party.

That's going back a bit, isn't it? She wasn't the only one by any means as I recall, who were the others? Was Streeting one?

Rebecca Long Bailey and Lisa Nandy are the ones I remember. Starmer didn’t sign it I don’t think.

Yes lots of politicians do things in line with which way the wind is blowing at the time and then change course again. E.g. Keir Starmer backtracking on his claims that some women can have a penis (well because Tony Blair told him to). Is Angela Raynor a true believer?

Although regardless of this, she is likely to parrot the position of the unions (which we know is bad), so that is concerning.

Streeting didn’t sign the pledge I don’t think, but if you go back to 2018 he was a member of Lily Madigan’s secret Labour Against Transphobia FB group which shared GC women members’ personal information (illegally) with a view to getting them purged from the party and possibly make trouble for them in other ways outside the LP. I think he’s acknowledged that was wrong at some point but I for one will never fully trust him.

I agree but some of these achievers have the mindset of "well, if I can do it anyone can" and doing away with all the safeguards in place to help a lot of those who can't. They forget that if everyone could do it they wouldn't be in the position that they're in.

Yes, Starmer's good at doing nothing commital which leads people to think there's more going on in there than evidence now suggests there actually is.

In the leadership webchat the women candidates were openly honestly batshit, but they had integrity, they actually said what they believed in and what they would do. I have more respect for that. Starmer said nothing, he gave no indication at all of what he thought or what he stood for. At the time this was thought to be a clever man keeping his powder dry. I increasingly think he plain didn't know.

I have always thought Angela rayner was set up to fail in her ministerial post as housing minister before her tax scandal as the prospect of any government building 1.5 m homes in a term was always unlikely

she would help her self no end if she was not such a gobby git and should be an example of rising above adversity with her child hood etc

It’s probable being a gobby git is what enabled her to rise above the adversities of her childhood.