Tag Archives: Angela Rayner

Angela Rayner jumps on the ‘threat to safety’ bandwagon. Playing the victim?

Angela Rayner: she got into deep water over the Stockport incident and is now trying to get out of it by playing the victim of intimidation and threats. Do you believe her?

Does this seem like bandwagon-jumping by Angela Rayner?

For context, this is the incident to which she is referring:

As you can see, there was no attempt at physical contact, let alone violence, by the bereaved Palestinian and his fellows upon Rayner or her colleague Jonathan Reynolds. In fact, they were subjected to violence by police who were in the hall in Stockport within seconds. Clearly they had been told to be on hand in case such an event happened, to rob protesters of their voice.

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The only criticism that may reasonably be levelled at the hecklers is that they were too forceful – but these are people who have witnessed appalling atrocities and are experiencing deep difficulties in getting anybody to listen, due to mainstream media and political support for Israel. Rayner and Reynolds are a part of that.

Fortunately, people are seeing through the smokescreen:

Rayner said she had altered her behaviour and was no longer leaving her house after the Stockport incident and the resignation from politics of Tory minister Mike Freer, who said he had received threats:

The article said the Justice Minister had received several threats to his personal safety, but admits that these have been since the Tories negotiated their way back into government with the Liberal Democrats in 2010.

These include narrowly missing a meeting with Ali Harbi Ali, who murdered fellow Tory MP David Amess, at his constituency office. It seems Freer has worn a stab vest at public events in his constituency since then.

The MP has said he was first targetted by a group called Muslims Against Crusades in 2011, who said the stabbing of Labour MP Stephen Timms should be “piercing reminder” to politicians that “their presence is no longer welcome in any Muslim area”.

He told The Daily Mail a suspected arson attack at the constituency office in December was “the last straw”.

The MP, who has pro-Israel views and represents a heavily Jewish constituency, said: “No MP can operate effectively without the support of their spouse and wider family. Sadly the serious incidents place intolerable stress on them too.”

His decision not to stand for re-election led to a debate in Parliament:

Threats to personal safety are never an acceptable form of behaviour – but they are, sadly, a normal part of day-to-day life if a person is a public figure. Even This Writer – working on and publishing a comparatively low-popularity political website – has received numerous threats since starting Vox Political in 2011.

And what exactly constitutes threatening behaviour? Rayner suggested the incident that we can see above has changed her own behaviour, but also mentions other incidents. What are they? Does she mean messages like this?

That’s just free speech; a person pointing out – in a forceful way, certainly – the kind of atrocities that have spurred others to make such impassioned pleas to politicians as we saw in Stockport.

There is also the issue of selectivity; we are being asked to sympathise with people like Rayner and Freer, but it seems Rayner and her supporters like Lucy Powell have no sympathy for MPs in their own party who have also suffered:

Here’s a bit of background on Ms Begum:

She was (allegedly?) a victim of domestic abuse, coercive control and financial abuse during her short marriage to a Tower Hamlets councillor, Ehtashamul Haque, between 2013 and 2015.

She was falsely accused of council housing fraud and had to go through a lengthy trial, at the end of which she was cleared of all charges.

Then details of her home address were distributed to all members of her local Labour Party in a letter to her that was described as “potentially libellous and intimidatory”.

She has been involved in a lengthy Labour Party complaints procedure ever since, and released an update on it in which she says she has felt “gaslit” by the party while continuing to suffer “harassment” and – yes – death threats.

Here’s her statement:

She wrote:

The process has been extremely distressing and damaging to my health in and of itself.

I have felt gaslit and have continually expressed my serious concerns at the Labour Party complaints procedure and whether it is able to respond appropriately to domestic abuse.

I have persevered because all I have ever wanted is a chance to live freely and have equal opportunity as a Labour Party member and a Labour Member of Parliament.

This has just not been the case.

The ongoing harassment, the brutal vexatious eight-day trial in 2021 and the illegitimate trigger process conducted whilst I was certified off sick in 2022 are unjust, undemocratic and unacceptable.

I have had to cope with this alongside the heightened Islamophobic abuse, the death threats and risks to my safety.

Have Rayner, Powell or any other supporters of Keir Starmer had the decency to say or publish a single word in support of their colleague?

This Writer hasn’t seen any.

Couple all of the above with StarmerLabour’s apparent willingness to deselect MPs who oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza, before the general election…

… and what does it all look like to you?

To me, it seems Rayner and the others in the Labour leadership are just another gang of Islamophobe cheerleaders for the Gaza genocide. Will they even try to prove me wrong?


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Labour ‘for sale’ as it cosies up to big business

Angela Rayner: she once denounced lobbyists acting as advisers to Tory government ministers; now her own electoral ‘battle bus’ is sponsored by a lobbyist and Labour is riddled with lobbyists advising shadow ministers on behalf of their clients.

Those of you who still think voting for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is a good idea need to ask yourselves: who will this party be working for – you, or the big businesses that are buying influence over Labour in advance of the general election?

Solomon Hughes has exposed the increasing influence of some of the worst big businesses on Labour, in Tribune magazine, writing:

Keir Starmer says he wants to clean up politics. Instead, he has facilitated a lobbyist takeover of the Labour Party, where predatory gambling firms, big oil and gig economy giants are buying influence at our expense.

In 2020 the Labour Party issued a press release in which its deputy leader, Angela Rayner, ripped into the Conservative government over ‘reports that lobbyists have been secretly serving as advisers to government ministers and departments’ and other revelations of ‘cronyism’ around ‘businesses and individuals with close links to the Conservative Party’. Rayner said it showed there was ‘one rule for lobbyists and their paying clients and another rule for the rest of us’.

This press release has been deleted from Labour’s website, along with all other pre-2022 notices. But Rayner’s own ‘battle bus’ is now ‘sponsored’ and part-funded by a Labour-connected lobbyist.

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According to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, Pentland Communications, a lobbying firm set up in 2018 by Barrie Cunning, paid Labour HQ £6,000 to fund Rayner’s ‘campaigning’, including ‘the provision of a branded vehicle’, a camper van with the slogan ‘Rayner on the Road’. Since August, Labour’s deputy leader has been using it for campaigning.

Pentland represents big housebuilders like Barratt. Rayner’s responsibilities include Labour housing policy. Pentland says it can help firms achieve ‘commercial objectives’ using its ‘good political relationships’. Paying for Rayner’s battle bus can’t hurt those ‘relationships’.

Pentland says other political events are also business opportunities. It tells clients that each party conference also ‘provides a good opportunity’ to meet politicians ‘in both formal and informal settings and have those important conversations’.

Rayner’s apparent reversal shows how Labour has fully embraced the corporate lobbying it denounced as ‘cronyism’ when it applied to the Conservatives. Concerns about corruption have disappeared as Labour pursues the intense lobbying that has come along with its lead in the polls.

The article goes on to suggest that “‘centrist’ politicians denouncing corporate corruption when in the opposition wallow in it when in government”. And it says:

Cameron highlighted how the ‘revolving door’ of ex-ministers and ex-advisers ‘for hire’ is key to lobbying. Labour has gone further, accepting lobbyists as its current officials. Abdi Duale was elected to Labour’s National Executive last September on the ‘moderate’ slate. The same month Duale became a director at FTI, a lobbying firm. FTI also employs former Labour MP Gemma Doyle, a director of key Labour ‘moderate’ group Progressive Britain. FTI offer clients ‘direct advocacy’ with ‘elected and appointed policymakers’. FTI’s recent clients include Palantir, the American spy-tech firm that is chasing contracts in the NHS.

The list goes on and on:

At the last Labour conference, Alice Perry won a seat on the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC). Typically for Labour, this dull-sounding body has significant power: it decides what debates Labour conferences hear. Perry, who was backed by both ‘moderate’ and ‘soft left’ factions, is also a public affairs director for the lobbying firm Cicero. The company tells clients she will be ‘advising on Labour Party engagement strategies’. Among Cicero’s clients are financial firms like Barclays and Blackrock, ‘buy-now-pay-later’ outfit Klarna, and privatisers like Serco.

In 2021 Rachel Reeves attacked the government over public services ‘being outsourced to a large private company like Serco, which has a poor track record and known links to the Conservative Party’. Now Serco hires Labour-linked lobbying firms. Serco executives shared platforms with shadow ministers at Labour’s 2023 conference. Perhaps we all misunderstood, and Reeves really objected to Serco’s ‘known links to the Conservative Party’ because she thought they should have known links to the Labour Party instead.

There are others, but we’ll skip those because the article goes on to state:

Corporations want to take big money contracts from the government while reducing any regulation or tax on their businesses. They want to shape the policy agenda and have turned to the consultants — as well as their own in-house lobbyists — to do so. Lobbying firms that spent years relying on their links with the Tories are adapting to a likely Labour government.

But – and this is important:

Something big is happening inside Labour as well. The party is welcoming lobbyists as the proof of, and route to, its ‘business engagement’. Under Starmer, Labour takes corporate support as a vote of confidence. If ‘business’ supports ‘labour’, then the party must be doing the right thing — and can hope for friendlier treatment by the corporate-run press.

And it could lead to scandal (again):

Labour is, in effect, using lobbyists to run much of its ‘business engagement’.

The last Labour government ran into a ‘cash for access’ scandal in 1998, when The Observer exposed lobbyists with New Labour links helping their clients get close to the new government. This was the first big blemish on Blair’s government. We are very likely to see a re-run of this scandal.

Worst of all is the possibility that the firms and lobbyists cosying up to Labour will use the connections (if the party wins the next election) to suck up government contracts, siphon off the cash and produce poor work.

This happened before, under Tony Blair’s New Labour:

We might end up with firms that suck money out of the public sector for poor work, giving another generation of future/former ministers jobs. The current wave of junior Labour officials taking corporate lobbying jobs acts as a kind of human promise, showing future ministers that they too can look forward to corporate jobs with a Labour government. This isn’t a theoretical risk: it is exactly what happened when the last Labour government embraced PFI and outsourcing. The lobbying and the jobs-for-the-boys-and-girls sweetened a bitter pill — although the former ministers got the sweeteners; we just got the bitterness.

Is that really what you want?

This Writer can’t see any difference between Starmer’s plan for a Labour government and what we already have under the Tories – apart from the possibility that the names of some of the ex-ministers taking jobs with big business will be different.

It seems clear that under a Starmer Labour government, public money will still be thrown away at private businesses who’ll provide no useful service to the public but will give jobs to the ministers who helped them.

So – please – do yourself and all the rest of us a favour.

Get yourself a list of all the candidates in your constituency and their manifestos, and educate yourself about what they are offering.

Then choose to vote for the candidate who offers the best deal for you.

I wrote the following in another article but it fits perfectly here, too:

Do not consider how other people will vote, either in your constituency or the other 649 around the UK. That is not your concern.

It is not for you to worry about which party will get enough votes to actually enact its policies. This will lead you down the usual garden path to voting in a government that won’t do anything at all for the good of the country, like the one we’ve had since 2010.

BE SELFISH. Bizarrely, it might be the only way to get the kind of government that all of us need.


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Angela Rayner in trouble AGAIN over Labour’s terrible attitude to the Gaza genocide

Angela Rayner: in trouble and she knows it.

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner has again been challenged over her party’s – and her own – failure to demand an end to hostilities between Israel and the people of Gaza.

As the number of innocent people who have been killed in the enclave rises toward 30,000, Rayner told interviewers on ITV’s Good Morning Britain that she would do “everything I possibly could” to stop the slaughter.

Sadly, “everything I possibly could” did not include voting to demand a ceasefire when that motion was put before Parliament. In the interview, Rayner agreed with Richard Madeley’s claim that it would be an empty gesture: “It’s not going to make it happen.”

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She dodged questioning about the fact that she had to be escorted by police out of a Labour fundraising event in Stockport after pro-Palestine protesters accused her of standing by while thousands died.

And of course the fact that Rishi Sunak has said the whole of the UK stands by Israel (we don’t), and Labour leader Keir Starmer backed him up to the hilt, went unmentioned.

And then – what about this?

For context: over the weekend, MP Kate Osamor was suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party for expressing the opinion that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. If the official line is that Labour leaders “don’t know” whether a genocide is happening, then that should not have happened; Ms Osamor has a right to her opinion.

Instead, she is out of the (Parliamentary) party, Labour refuses to support calls for Israel to stop murdering innocent Palestinians and party leader Keir Starmer endorses Rishi Sunak’s claim that everybody in the UK wants Israel to carry on killing – while denying that there is any evidence of genocide.

There will be a general election soon. How can anybody vote for this Labour Party when it is nothing but a gang of genocide deniers?


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Labour’s compassion for the Gaza bereaved: police manhandling

Angela Rayner: whatever she was saying in her speech, it wasn’t so important that she could get police to manhandle a bereaved Gazan Palestinian out of the room.

Labour’s position on the Gaza genocide is now very ugly indeed.

As Angela Rayner was giving a speech, a bereaved Palestinian interrupted to raise awareness of what is actually happening in Gaza.

Some of you may consider that to be rude, at the very least – but how else are these people going to get their point across? They are being denied a voice everywhere – as subsequent events prove very clearly:

That’s right: the first speaker and those who stood up to speak out in support of him were manhandled out of the event by police officers in order to shut them up.

Is that what the United Kingdom is, now? A police state?

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The appropriate action for Rayner to take would have been to pause her speech, give the bereaved gentlemen the benefit of some sympathy and some time, and listen to what he had to say.

Then she could have taken note of what he said. She could still have stated Labour’s position after he finished, but she could also have promised to bring his concerns about that position to the other party leaders.

She didn’t do any of those things so, judging her by her actions, I’m going to conclude that she doesn’t care about this man’s loss – or the loss suffered by anyone else of Gazan descent in the UK who has lost family members in the genocide.

By extension, she doesn’t care about the genocide itself, and by further extension, we can conclude that nobody else in the Labour Party machine does either.

Taking that to its logical conclusion – as espoused by the late, great Tony Benn who said that our politicians support events abroad that they would like to see happening here in the UK: Rayner and the thugs now posing as leaders of the Labour Party only wish they could visit the same grief on people here as has been dealt out to the people of Gaza.

All right – perhaps that final conclusion is taking it a little too far.

But it is a reasonable position to take, based on Rayner’s immediate reaction to call in the police.

It shows very clearly that the Labour Party under its current leadership has no regard for what is right – morally and/or ethically – and only wants power for the sake of its own leaders’ enrichment.

If you were planning to vote Labour before this, I certainly hope you have changed your mind now.


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If Black Lives Matter to Keir Starmer, why hasn’t he acted against Labour’s racists?

New direction: Labour leader Keir Starmer (right) and deputy Angela Rayner (left) spot Diane Abbott and Clive Lewis at a PLP meeting.

Labour seems slow to comment on anything lately, but these words seem to have struck a raw nerve:

It’s a good point, well-made. The Labour report that claimed party staff members had deliberately obstructed anti-Semitism investigations in order to make then-leader Jeremy Corbyn seem anti-Semitic himself, and that suggested the same staffers had conspired to prevent Labour from winning the 2017 general election (the 2019 election was not part of its subject matter), includes evidence of anti-black and minority ethnic racism too.

But new party leader Keir Starmer has not lifted a finger to investigate these claims.

Alleged anti-Semites are suspended the instant claims are made against them – true or false – and the allegations are now pursued with a fervour not seen since the Salem witch trials of the 17th century.

But Starmer’s – and Rayner’s – Labour seems to think it fine for staff members to persecute the UK’s first and longest-serving black female MP, who already suffers more than half of all the racist abuse directed at any MPs.

Perhaps this is the reason Labour is allegedly haemorrhaging BAME support, as reported by the Huffington Post:

Labour Party voters are still reeling from the aftermath of a leaked Labour report that has fuelled allegations of anti-Black racism at the heart of the party – and many have told HuffPost UK that they now feel “politically homeless”.

It also did something else that was not on the tin: raised grave concerns of anti-Black racism, otherwise referred to as Afriphobia, which campaigners argue have not been adequately addressed by the party’s leadership.

Labour officials used a string of insults in private WhatsApp groups to describe senior Black MPs and officials including Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler and Clive Lewis, the lengthy document revealed.

For a number of Black voters it meant it was time to part ways with the party.

For many, this scandal is the latest let-down in a long list of concerns around Blackness and the Labour Party such as lack of representation.

Now we see Starmer and Rayner making a token display of support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

This Writer has contributed more with the articles published on This Site about that subject.

Could it be that Labour really has become as racist – under Starmer – as some complained it was under Corbyn?

And do we really have to wait until July, when an inquiry into the Labour report is due to release its findings, for that to become clear?

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Labour plan to end Free Schools and control Academies brings intelligence back to education

Angela Rayner: Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary was set to announce the policy.

Good – this is another common-sense policy from the Labour Party Conference.

Free Schools were nothing more than devices to funnel money away from the state education system – where it was needed – and into the hands of money-grubbing Tories.

They were built where they weren’t needed – or if they did appear where there was a genuine need, they took pupils from elsewhere and overlooked those who lived next door.

They employed unqualified amateurs as teachers and were rocked by scandal after scandal when they repeatedly failed to reach the academic standards required of them.

Under the Tories, Academies have been another method of dumping school pupils into the hands of private companies at the expense of achievement, and at huge cost to local authorities.

No wonder the UK’s education system is an international laughing-stock!

It’s time we went back to doing what works; time our own government stopped trying to undermine students solely because they don’t come from a moneyed background.

We know the nation’s rich has produced generations of imbeciles – Boris Johnson is a product of Eton and Oxford, and look at the state of him.

Now the UK needs the best brains it has, thanks to the monumental blunders of the generation of dimwits – but these have been stifled by the narrow-minded jealousy of the Johnsons of this country.

Labour’s plan will start to turn that situation around and bring intelligence back to education.

Labour would scrap free schools and bring academies under greater local democratic control as part of a plan to unwind Conservative education reforms that it says have created a legacy of “fragmentation and privatisation”.

The new policy will be unveiled by Angela Rayner at the Labour party conference on Monday, the first time that the shadow education secretary has presented her own structural reform plan in her two years in the job.

“The Tories’ academy system is simply not fit for purpose,” Rayner is expected to say. “Labour will end the forced conversion of local schools to academies, scrap the inefficient free school programme and instead focus on delivering what works to get the best results for pupils.”

Labour said that it would allow local authorities to build schools again and halt the free school programme, a flagship initiative of Michael Gove when he was education secretary under the coalition government.

Source: Labour vows to rein in academies and scrap free schools | Politics | The Guardian

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A freeze on tuition fee hikes, AFTER a tuition fee hike? Theresa May is totally out of touch

This lonely student must be rich, to be able to afford Tory tuition fees and interest charges on student loans [Image: Getty Images].

It is welcome that the Labour Party has come out in support of Vox Political‘s opinion on Theresa May’s offer to young voters.

I wrote yesterday: “The announcement that tuition fees will be frozen is pointless, coming as it does after a rise of £250 a year was introduced earlier this month.

“Obviously, considering the cost of tuition fees and the debt burden of loans, being a student is now an occupation intended for the very rich; these are offers to the privileged, not to the population at large.

“It seems incredible that the media are touting this as Theresa May’s answer to Labour’s overwhelming popularity among young voters.”

I also predicted a swift u-turn. Let’s see if I’m right.

Angela Rayner MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Education, responding to the Tories’ announcement on freezing tuition fees, said: “The fact Theresa May thinks she can win over young people by pledging to freeze tuition fees only weeks after increasing them to £9,250 shows just how out of touch she is.

“Another commission to look at tuition fees is a desperate attempt by the Tories to kick the issue into the long grass because they have no plans for young people and no ideas for our country. They are yesterday’s party.

“The next Labour government will scrap tuition fees entirely and introduce a National Education Service for lifelong learning for the many not the few. “

Source: Labour Press — The fact Theresa May thinks she can win over young…


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Humiliated Tories scrap controversial (racist?) nationality census for 2-5 year-olds

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn launched a motion this week to stop pupil nationality data collection [Image: BBC].

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn launched a motion this week to stop pupil nationality data collection [Image: BBC].

This is a sneaky move by Theresa May and her gang.

It’s another humiliating climbdown and U-turn for a prime minister who has spent her entire prime ministerial career of such things, but they’re trying to use it to de-fang moves by the Labour Party to stand up for children.

It is quite clear that the Party of Division (that’s the Conservative Party, for those who need to be told) wanted to create another fake enemy for “hardworking British people” (whoever they are) to hate.

Theresa May’s cronies knew there was resentment against “immigrants” who are said to be taking away our housing, health and school places.

This is because Conservatives have been rationing these services (under the banner of fake “austerity” – fake because it affects only the poor and not the rich).

Instead of addressing the real cause of the problem – their own rationing process – Mrs May’s Tories wanted to capitalise on it by making the perceived cause – “immigrants” – more visible and therefore more vulnerable.

Jeremy Corbyn has put forward a motion to block this – and it has cross-party support in Parliament. So now Theresa May and her Tories look like xenophobes and racists.

Their solution: Cancel the monitoring of children aged two-to-five but continue with the rest.

They’ll seem to be acting benevolently while still collecting enough information to continue pursuing their “divide and rule” policy.

Nursery schools will no longer be forced to collect details on the nationality and birth place of children as young as two… following a Government U-turn over the controversial school census.

Since September this year, schools, colleges and nurseries have been required to ask parents to provide details of where their children were born, as well as nationality and English language proficiency – a move MPs say has “all the hallmarks of racism”.

The new legislation, which comes as part of an expansion on the existing school census, have been met with fierce backlash from parents, campaigners and MPs, who have criticised the census as “dangerous and divisive” and raised concerns over how the information is being used.

After meeting with campaign group Schools Against Border for Children (ABC), Department for Education officials said the collection of data on nationality and country of birth would not be extended towards children aged two to five, despite previous Government guidance stating the contrary.

The requirement still stands for children of primary and secondary school age, in spite of cross-party opposition and a motion lodged by Jeremy Corbyn to block the new legislation.

Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner has condemned the census as it stands, criticising the Government for forcing schools to police the immigration status of children.

Department for Education officials said Education Secretary Justine Greening had disagreed with the proposals set out by her predecessor Nicky Morgan to expand data collection.

Source: Government scraps plans for controversial nationality census for 2-5 year-olds in humiliating U-turn | The Independent

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