So-called ‘working-class warrior’, Angela Rayner has been unceremoniously ditched from Starmer’s cabinet – having failed to pay £40,000 in stamp duty for her third house.
While some alleged ‘lefts’ lament her departure – and the so-called ‘classist’ and ‘sexist’ coverage of the debacle by the press – ordinary workers will shed no tears for this class traitor, who will continue her career on a tidy £93,904 MP’s salary.
Class warrior, or class traitor?
Rayner played a crucial role in Starmer’s government to provide a ‘working-class’ cover for Labour’s austerity – simultaneously putting down rumblings from discontented Labour MPs, and pacifying the union leaders who could attend a meeting or two with their ‘inside woman’.
Of course, Rayner was never really fighting for the working class, which she deserted long ago.
Her voting records speak louder than her promises and posturing: she fully supporing cutting disability benefits, while insisting any rebel MPs will be punished; she refused to nationalise water companies and other failing utility companies; she abstained from voting on the ceasefire in Gaza, while refusing to use the word “genocide”; and she refused to abolish the two-child benefit cap.
angela rayner was a senior member of a government that proposed the deepest cuts in generations to disability benefits and refused to get rid of a benefit cap that thrusts hundreds of thousands into poverty each year, super woman is not how i’d describe her… https://t.co/HoyBRUU7FH
— Ben Smoke (@bencsmoke) September 5, 2025
Even more egregiously, she wielded her ministerial position to openly support the strikebreaking Birmingham Council in their dispute with the bin workers – playing the role of scab-in-chief.
Union leaders asleep at the wheel
It is therefore a damning indictment of the trade union leaders that so many hopes were placed on her – notably, to pass through the Employment Rights Bill, which she is said to have “championed.”
“The Employment Rights Bill”, said Unison’s general secretary Christina McAnea in a desperate attempt to sow trust in the Labour government, “is the biggest boost to workers’ rights in over 70 years.”
Meanwhile, Paul Nowak, head of the Trades Union Congress, paid a grovelling tribute to Rayner: “We are just weeks away from the biggest upgrade in workers’ rights in a generation becoming law. Angela Rayner can be rightly proud of her role in delivering that legislation.”
As an aside, the Morning Star, the mouthpiece of the so-called ‘Communist’ Party of Britain, quoted Nowak’s nauseating words without comment or criticism!
Sharon Graham – the Unite leader who often likes to paint herself as anti-Westminster in order to appeal to her base – has decried the whole Cabinet reshuffle as a “move in the wrong direction”.
Unfortunately, even some of the more militant trade union leaders who have criticised the bill – like Eddie Dempsey, Fran Heathcote, and Sarah Woolley – have called on Starmer to “finish the job”.
Prepare for battle!
With Rayner’s departure, the trade union leaders are now worried that the bill will be stalled, abandoned, or watered down – and are pleading with Starmer not to backtrack.
Their fears reveal a grain of truth. Slowly and unsurely, the realisation is dawning on them that Starmer’s government may not be on their side.
Despite how meagre the bill was in the first place, as it was significantly watered down once Labour got to power, the ‘business community’ was up in arms about it.
Numerous Financial Times articles have made explicit that the bosses were already rubbing their hands at Rayner’s departure. Meanwhile, a senior Labour figure said Number 10 was itching to “kill key parts of [read: all] the bill”.
Peter Kyle, Starmer’s new blairite business secretary, had an immediate call with 100 business leaders, to reassure them that this government hasn’t forgotten its place as butler to the bankers and bosses.
At the same time, Rayner’s departure is a significant blow to Starmer, who has lost what little remained of his government’s ‘working-class’, ‘left-wing’ credentials. Soon enough, his office put out statements to reassure the union leaders that there would be no backtracking on the bill.
But as another senior Labour official tacitly admitted, “they don’t have to dilute it in the House of Commons, there will be lots of other opportunities… there’s a lot you can kick into the long grass. And the government will keep saying ‘we are not going to water it down’.”
Now, the time has come for the trade union leaders to face up to their demons. ‘Their woman’ is gone. ‘Their bill’ is being butchered. Their ‘strategy’ is bankrupt.
Will the general staff of the labour movement break ranks with the Labour government and call their troops into a resolute battle against Starmer’s austerity? Or will they continue to beg for crumbs from the Cabinet’s table?
Their track record does not fill us with optimism.
