LABOUR is “running out of time” because it appears to back the Establishment over working people, former deputy premier Angela Rayner has claimed in a fresh blow to PM Sir Keir Starmer.

Ms Rayner, widely understood to be preparing a leadership bid if Sir Keir is forced from office after anticipated disastrous local and devolved election results in May, received immediate backing from Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, left MPs and trade unionists.

Her immediate target was controversial immigration reforms being introduced by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, a potential leadership challenger herself from the hard right Labour Together wing of the party.

But it is Sir Keir who will be most rocked by his former deputy’s intervention. It comes just days after Ms Rayner was reported as assuring a City audience that she would not rock their boat as premier.

Her speech to the soft-left Mainstream faction was designed to solidify her position as a government critic from the left.

Labour was losing support because of the perception that it “represented the Establishment, not working people. At worst, we became it.”

She told the audience: “As a party, and as a movement, we cannot hide, we cannot just go through the motions in the face of decline. 

“There’s no safe ground and we’re running out of time. The change that people wanted so desperately needs to be seen, it needs to be felt. And we have to show that it is a Labour government that will deliver it.”

She also criticised Ms Mahmood’s new hard-line anti-migrant policy, which increases the standard qualifying presence for leave to remain from five to 10 years, as “un-British.”

“We cannot talk about earning a settlement if we keep moving the goalposts. Because moving the goalposts undermines our sense of fair play,” she said.

The policy is deeply unpopular on Labour’s backbenches and will likely be the subject of a rebellion which Ms Rayner will now be at the head of.

She also slammed the hard-right Reform for setting “people against one another for political gain, and who stoke fear through blame.

“They will agree the system is rigged, but they are on the side of those who rigged it,” she said.

Mr Burnham, who would himself likely be a leadership candidate had Sir Keir not manoeuvred to block his return to the Commons, said today: “I certainly know where she is coming from and the party would always do well to listen to what Angela has got to say.”

John McDonnell MP was sceptical of Ms Rayner’s remarks, telling the Star: “Candidates to succeed Starmer are lining up but 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.”

Left MP Jon Trickett, who called for a leadership change some weeks ago, told the Star: “The Rayner speech must be the start of an open and honest conversation about the Labour leadership’s recent record.

“The country is crying out for social justice and yet the government has failed to deliver the change that people voted for. With unemployment on the rise as well as poverty, we have to be clear that this is not why people voted Labour.”

Transport union TSSA general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust, who has also called for Ms Rayner to replace Sir Keir, said: “This is sound advice to the Prime Minister from Angela Rayner.

“The Labour government is definitely running out of time under Keir Starmer and is sleepwalking towards huge losses in May’s elections.

“Angela Rayner is right to criticise the government’s plan to make migrants wait so much longer for the right to remain.

“Instead of pandering to Farage and getting dragged into distant wars that create more refugees, Starmer should keep Britain out of conflicts abroad and focus on fixing the problems at home.”

Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said everyone in government would share Ms Rayner’s “impatience with the pace of change” but he backed Ms Mahmood’s reforms as balancing fairness with border security.

Sir Keir’s standing with Labour backbench MPs has recently improved slightly because of his pretence that Britain is not backing the US-Israel assault on Iran.

He played this card again in the Commons today, telling MPs: “We will not be drawn into the wider war.

“I want to see this war end as quickly as possible. The longer it continues, the bigger the impact on the cost of living. The best way forward is a negotiated settlement.”