When Nadhim Zahawi’s fate was hanging in the balance after a scandal over unpaid taxes, Angela Rayner was one of the first to pile on the political pressure.
“Nadhim Zahawi’s story about his tax affairs doesn’t add up,” she said at the time. “After months of denials, the truth emerges. His position is untenable. Rishi Sunak must dismiss him from his cabinet.”
Her comments were similar in 2018, when Jeremy Hunt received a discount when buying seven flats from a Conservative donor. “Jeremy Hunt avoids £100,000 stamp duty by exploiting Tory tax loophole & buying flats in bulk,” she posted on X.
Rayner’s effectiveness as a campaigner, communicator and scourge of the Tories made her an invaluable asset to Keir Starmer, but it also left her particularly vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy as her own tax scandal unfolded this week.
So when Laurie Magnus found on Friday she had breached the ministerial code, the deputy prime minister felt she had little option but to follow the advice she often gave to Conservatives, and resign.
“I accept that I did not meet the highest standards in relation to my recent property purchase,” she wrote in her resignation letter.
Starmer and his deputy have always been an odd political couple.
Both had difficult upbringings: Starmer was the child of an ill mother and an emotionally detached father, while Rayner was the daughter of a mother with chronic depression and had her first child aged 16.
But whereas Starmer responded to hardship by developing a tough exterior and immersing himself in his work, Rayner became a gregarious and energetic trade union representative, whose emotional openness is a key part of her political success.
And while Starmer is known for his sober style, both in clothing and behaviour, Rayner cuts a more colourful figure, with her bright power suits and willingness to be pictured with a glass of wine in hand.
The two were forced together by the vagaries of the Labour party constitution, elected on the same day but in separate ballots as leader and deputy leader.
While both came from the party’s soft left, Rayner was always seen as more authentically of the left, in part because of her trade union background. Their relationship was also made awkward by the fact Rayner shared a flat with Starmer’s defeated leadership rival Rebecca Long-Bailey.
“Theirs was an arranged marriage; they have both admitted they are an odd couple,” said Luke Sullivan, Starmer’s former political director. “But they also both see and value each other’s strengths.”
Whatever the mutual respect, it was badly damaged in 2021, when Starmer attempted to demote his deputy in a shadow cabinet reshuffle after a disastrous byelection loss in Hartlepool.
Rayner called his bluff, pointing out that she would retain power as elected deputy leader of the party – a title he has never been able to take from her. She emerged from that struggle with a beefed-up role shadowing Michael Gove as shadow minister without portfolio.
That tussle proved a turning point in the relationship between the pair. Having proved her political smarts, Rayner went on to win over the Labour leader with her ability to communicate with ordinary voters, as well as to smooth relations with upset members of the parliamentary party.
As the election neared, her northern working-class roots and plain speaking proved a boon with the kind of “red wall” voters Starmer was desperate to win back from the Conservatives.
“I love general election campaigns,” she told the Guardian at the time. “Parliament is school to me, that’s where you need to do your revision and your homework, whereas being on the road for me is like playtime.”
Once Labour was in power, Rayner proved she had another political skill – as a deft legislator. Even though she was put in charge of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, she kept responsibility for her personal project of improving workers’ rights.
In what is likely to prove a bittersweet moment for the departing cabinet minister, her workers’ rights bill is due to pass its final stage in just over a week.
She also managed to secure nearly £40bn for social housing over the next 10 years from the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, as part of a spending review that left several other minister disappointed.
Meanwhile her importance to Starmer as his representative to his own backbenchers was proved in July, when she led negotiations with rebels over the welfare reform bill. In the end Starmer allowed her to reach an agreement that the bill should be gutted of its main proposal without even Reeves able to stand in the way.
As the row about her stamp duty arrangements broke over the past two weeks, Starmer went out of his way to defend his deputy.
She sat beside him at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, during which he declared: “I am very proud to sit alongside a deputy prime minister who is building 1.5m homes, who is bringing the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights for a generation, and has come from a working-class background to be deputy prime minister.”
Some in No 10 worried, however, that the prospect of keeping a housing secretary in place even after she had been found to have underpaid her housing taxes was too much of a political liability. “It does not look great,” admitted one.
But they also knew the alternative was to relegate Rayner to the backbenches, where she was likely to become a voice for the disenchanted left of the party and a focal point for any future rebellions.
In the end nothing but a full bill of clean health from the prime minister’s adviser on ministerial standards would have saved her career. Without that, her resignation on Friday seemed inevitable, leaving the prime minister without a deputy, without a housing secretary and without one of his stronger electoral assets.
His sorrow in losing an unlikely but important ally was conveyed in his letter back to Rayner – written, unusually, by hand.
“You have been a trusted colleague and a true friend for many years,” he wrote. “I have nothing but admiration for you and huge respect for your achievements in politics.”
