Angela Rayner has been burnishing her Left-wing credentials this morning with a call for a hike in benefits as she joined other Labour big beasts in bidding to join Andy Burnham’s top team. The Mail has the story.
Labour big beasts are frantically jockeying for spots on Andy Burnham’s top team as he closes in on No. 10.
Behind-the-scenes lobbying has been ramping up with a focus on who will get the prized roles in Cabinet.
Angela Rayner made a bold pitch for a comeback this morning, talking up her record on social housing – a pet interest of Burnham – and calling for more generous welfare.
Current Chancellor Rachel Reeves made an awkward appearance in Burnham’s ‘mass selfie’ with Labour MPs yesterday, but has seemingly failed to persuade him to keep her on.
Instead Ed Miliband is believed to be pushing for her job, with Left-wing MPs enthusiastically making his case.
However, unions are alarmed at the prospect of him taking his hardline Net Zero approach to the Treasury, and the former party leader’s economic views are regarded as ‘Soviet’.
Wes Streeting is another option being considered by Burnham’s team, after the former health secretary dropped his own challenge to Sir Keir and fell in behind the overwhelming favourite.
But the Blairite would be anathema to some on the Left who have been Burnham’s biggest champions.
Other names touted include Yvette Cooper, who would be seen as a centrist choice, and Shabana Mahmood – although she is thought to want to stay as Home Secretary.
Angela Rayner is also expected to make a return to the Cabinet.
The former deputy PM underlined her Left-wing credentials this morning with an impassioned plea for more welfare at the Social Mobility Symposium.
Rayner said those on benefits were “not lazy people on the dole, they’re working families who cant keep up”.
“If you’re working full time you should be able to pay your energy bill, do the weekly shop and maybe even afford a little holiday at the end of the year,” she said.
She praised the Labour Government’s move to lift the two-child benefit cap, adding: “That’s not something we should be shy about. It’s not something that we should hide away from. We should have the courage to say that those are our values and we stand by them.”
Rayner said she would welcome a debate about how to enable social mobility, and that people “might disagree on how we get there”, but that “from my life experience, I can say that it was tax credits that helped me when I was that single mum in 1999 on that Bridgehall estate”.
She also cited “intervention that gave us a council house, free adult education that allowed me to go back into school when I left with no pass rates on my GCSEs, the Sure Start centre that helped me to change that poverty link that had plagued my family for generations, the NHS”.
Rayner insisted she had “dug my heels in” over funding for social housing while she was in Government. Burnham has previously backed investment in council housing and called for private rent controls.
Worth reading in full.
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I know it’s not technically a benefit but i bet she doesn’t mean for pensioners to get the equivalent of the national minimum wage that apparently is the minimum anyone needs to live on.
Rayner’s an idiot. Doesn’t she realise that working people cannot afford….
The best way to help working families who are struggling would be to cut taxes and unnecessary regulation, not just give them more handouts from the rest of the population.
Still refusing to admit that there are hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, who are gaming and milking the system.
Saw this useful summary – I’m sure all these righteous people will 100% stick to their values that were so important last time?…
Come on Andy. Put Ange in charge of tax – she’s good at that.
Poacher turned gamekeeper?
You have to love and admire these socialists who are full of brotherly and sisterly solidarity with one another, putting the good of the country before their own ambitions, belonging to a member-led party where every man and woman has a say and the plebs are not dictated to by the toffs. I’d love to ask some of my moron lefty middle class colleagues how they can take this seriously.
“She (Rayner) praised the Labour Government’s move to lift the two-child benefit cap, adding: “That’s not something we should be shy about. It’s not something that we should hide away from. We should have the courage to say that those are our values and we stand by them.”
And my view is that the country cannot afford to continue ever-growing, predominantly South Indian families via the benefit system. If they need benefits to bring up children they cannot afford those children and neither can the taxpayers.
This is not something that we should hide away from.
That’s my opinion and I stand by it.
Let us analyse Ms Rayners words.
It was tax credits that helped her as a single Mum. Why was she a single mum? at 15 I understand. Millions of other girls do not get Pregnant at 15 especially when the State provides free contraception. She was provided with a free education, which she elected to give up in order to get Pregnant, and not continue her Education but then take from the State.
She was because of her lifestyle choice given a free house, she then claims she was then funded to go back into Education, she gained a NVQ in social care. Not anything academic mind.
So because she chose to become Pregnant as a school girl, she benefitted from those who did not, those who even if they did continued their Education, those who did who chose to go into the world of work with qualifications, without the benefit of free housing, free money, and then a nice little job in the Trade union.
She is everything that is wrong with Socialists, they are not really interested in Welfare as a remedy to help the seriously ill, the disabled (many of whom still work), she is interested in… Read more »
A very astute summary of the Stockport Slapper and yes she is a very dangerous woman and for all the reasons you have listed.
Has she shown him her ginger growler yet?
😂😂
I had to explain that to someone yesterday….How can these clowns be in our employment?
Dyed
Wow, I work full time on an oil rig and can barely afford a family holiday.
But it’s ok for me to pay for al these lazy fks to have their own?
fks
folks, I assume? 🙂
I’m in favour of paying more benefits to those who really need it. Funded by withdrawing benefits from those who don’t really need it.
Tesco is fundraising for Help for Heroes – our veterans need to go begging – shame on this Government.
And their policies for creating the enterprise and employment that yield the taxes that pay for welfare etc are….Oh silly me, this is socialism, the great vampire of economics. Even parasites let their host live.
Oh, Hound, it’s simple. MAGIC MONEY TREE.
Oh and all that lovely free power from Edward’s windmills and solar panels will help a lot.
Classic socialism: child benefit for as many children as you like that you can’t or won’t afford to feed but don’t worry because the state run schools and their breakfast clubs will pick up the slack. And the consequence: a massive client state of voters ever dependent on a Labour government, grotesque levels of taxation for everyone?
What could possibly go wrong?
Oh! Nationalist majorities in Scotland and Wales torpedoing Labour’s chances in the country as a whole. Hilarious!
Just how thick are these people?
Kindergarten Politics of Dependency
In fact, I’ve seen less patronising behaviour in the local crèche.
“Rayner said those on benefits were “not lazy people on the dole, they’re working families who cant keep up”.”
They are unproductive people who are destroying wealth in the economy.
If they are not being paid wage sufficient to “keep up” it is because the value of their labour is so low. The cost of their output is their wage plus the “benefits” they receive. This means consumers are being misled because the price they pay for whatever the output is is less than what it really is.
Prices are important to inform consumers’ purchase decisions.
No society can survive this crazy economic madness – £3 trillion debt, and rising.
And/or they’ve lost control of their debt and expenses.
Spend less than you earn.
Avoid debt.
Invest the rest.
Anyone – and I mean anyone (barring obvious exceptions) – can do it.
People want the champagne lifestyle on lemonade wages.
Still, when the “world leaders” set the trend for spend spend spend borrow borrow borrow, one can understand why people behave as they do…
The reason their wages are so low is that the Tories and Labour have encouraged cheap Migrants both legal and illegal to come here, they will work for next to nothing and live in HMO’s and take welfare. The Brexiteers loved this because its so great to have cheap Nannies and Plumbers, the Governments love it because they get cheap NHS Nurses and Doctors and carers. Rayner is part of the problem if she cared about those on low wages she would stop the Migrants but instead she supports them
I cannot comment on the price of nannies but plumbers are two hundred quid a day minimum.
You can almost feel her trying to keep these conjoined facts separate. Its like a 10 year old who struggles to get Fractions. The question and the answer are right there, but she just cant grasp them.
As it happens, I am in a working family. I run my little business, I work 60 hours a week at age 65, I take nothing from the state, in fact I pay in a good five figure sum. I’m not able to take holidays or afford luxuries, just pay the bills, pay the wages, and get up and do it all again tomorrow. We’ve gone from making a modest living, to having to grind out every last penny of profit so we can afford to stay in business another month. Labour can’t be gone fast enough.