MANY will share John McDonnell’s scepticism regarding Angela Rayner’s speech this week apparently pushing forward her campaign to succeed Keir Starmer as Labour leader and Prime Minister in a contest expected after the May elections.

Mr McDonnell told the Star that “it strains credibility that people who served in the Cabinet through the government’s complicity in Gaza, voting against scrapping the two-child limit and for welfare cuts have suddenly had a damascene conversion.”

Clearly, Rayner wishes to reset the government with a new focus on the interests of working people. She is surely right that the government, only 18 months in office, is already “running out of time”.

She is also right that the problem has been the government appearing to serve the Establishment rather than working people, although appearances here do not deceive.

The achievements she trumpets, on employment rights and protection for renters, while flawed, are real and supported by this paper.

But it is equally clear that she will have to work harder to convince the left that she is a plausible standard-bearer for its aspirations.

She served under Starmer without complaint since his first, and fraudulent, election as party leader in 2020. She accepted without demur his factional onslaught against the left, and went along with his shameful support for the Gaza genocide.

She was a loyal member of his Cabinet, through numerous anti-working class policy decisions, up until the moment of her forced resignation last year in a dispute over stamp duty on a property she purchased.

Rayner will argue that she has simply been a loyal deputy to the leader, as she was loyal to Jeremy Corbyn throughout his leadership of the party.

If that argument is to have any hope of sticking, it is all the more important that she spell out exactly how a Rayner leadership would differ from Starmer on Gaza, on public ownership, Treasury rules, house-building, military spending and more.

Reports that she has assured City interests that she would not introduce a radical change in economic strategy are scarcely reassuring. It is understandable that any new Prime Minister would not want to be faced with an immediate run on the pound, but the task is to insulate the economy from such undemocratic pressures, not capitulate before them in advance.

Labour’s left is now uniting around a common programme for change in government strategy, as evidenced by the Reset Labour initiative backed by both left campaign Momentum and soft-left Mainstream today.

It hit the nail on the head with its statement that “Labour can only survive — and actually deliver for people and communities — if we choose a different path: fair taxation of the wealthiest, real investment in public services, taking essential services like energy and water into democratic ownership, and promoting peace and internationalism abroad.”

The challenge for Rayner is to show that she can carry forward that vision. 

She may consider that Starmer’s undemocratic rule changes, concentrating power in the hands of MPs, make it so unlikely that a candidate of the socialist, Corbyn tradition would make it onto the ballot paper that the left has little choice but to back her or surrender to the right-wing of Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood, which would only hasten the party’s demise. Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is unable to stand, while Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has repeatedly and publicly ruled out running.

But the government’s ratings are in the gutter and the case for a sharper break from Starmer could find listeners. Either way, a wait-and-see approach wastes the real potential in the labour movement to shape the coming contest politically. Unions must find ways to press candidates — even those from union backgrounds, like Rayner — to align with our priorities.