Late one September evening, as she was preparing for bed, Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, received a phone call from Keir Starmer. After nearly ten minutes of pleasantries, Starmer reached his point: he wanted to rip up the party’s rule book for electing future leaders. Rayner advised him to make sure that he had enough trade union support to be confident of passing the reforms before proceeding. He agreed, and the conversation ended.
The initiative is of deep importance to Rayner, who harbours her own leadership ambitions, as well as to Starmer, who wants to put the party’s structures on a more solid footing. Yet despite their shared interest in the reforms, Labour’s two most powerful politicians have a dynamic defined by mutual suspicion. For those who want Labour to mount a serious challenge to Boris Johnson’s government, the question is whether the official opposition can make any headway while its leader and his deputy remain at odds.
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