Analysis comment

Rayner turns on students, would not abolish tuition fees

Excruciating New Statesman article tries to polish Rayner’s credentials but she’s almost as keen to distance herself from Corbyn years as Starmer – and all too willing to praise new leader nonsensically

Angela Rayner: no friend of those struggling with debt

A fawning article in the centrist New Statesman has tried to build up Angela Rayner’s prospects of becoming the next Labour leader, praising her ‘elegant’ stance as she smokes a cigarette, describing what she eats with her baked potato (and bizarrely her pride in a ‘robot extractor fan’ and in the large tiles on her floor) and quoting Rayner saying she’s so good at PMQs because she practises on sixth formers and that the Tories fear her because ‘I say it how I see it’.

The article shows Rayner as all too eager to praise – nonsensically – the party leader who has often been said to want rid of her, lauding a supposed ‘sense of moral obligation’ that has done nothing to prevent Starmer shredding all his campaign promises, waging war on the human rights and democracy of Labour members, sneering at the plight of low-paid bin workers being abused by a right-wing Labour council in Coventry or responding like a Pavlovian hound to support the Tories in their murderous handling of the pandemic and stand aside while they destroy our rights and justice system.

And it also quotes her supposed abhorrence of poverty, which it says stems from her own experience of it:

There’s a poverty trap in this country. [The Tories are] constantly suggesting that people are in poverty because it’s somehow their fault. The majority of the time, it’s not. I know that I did not ask to be born into poverty. I needed the levers of state to support me.

Rayner blames the issue on the Tories being out of touch and says it’s worsening because of the soaring cost of living and talks about the importance of recognising people’s ‘aspirations’, that word beloved of Tories and the Labour right.

But the article also reveals that Rayner told her sixth-form victims that she would not abolish tuition fees – a betrayal not only of the party’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos, which as a front-bencher she would have had input to and signed off on, but of the millions of people in this country whose struggle against poverty and to realise their aspirations is made far harder because of the burden of student debt.

A burden that she would see continue, by her own admission – just with a bit lower interest rate and a higher repayment threshold – instead of a return to the far fairer and saner days in which grants were available to ensure that the potential of this country could be developed without massive individual debts that then effectively double if one student sets up home with another.

Such an approach will appeal to those Tories and Labour right-wingers who imposed the burden on others, pulling up the ladder after they themselves had enjoyed the opportunity for a properly funded education and a debt-free start to working life.

But it does nothing for the millions who need a genuine Labour government instead of the sham now on offer – and no amount of talk about Labour being the party of aspiration will change or disguise that.

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17 comments

  1. Power has gone to her head. She changed into a plastic Barbie without any real empathy or understanding of how her decisions affect others less fortunate.

  2. For Rayner, it’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it, apparently. For Starmer, it’s not what you say, it’s whatever brings results. Or so he hopes. What they have in common is stinking, rank opportunism.

    1. Superb. Overall this Monthly Review article offers a real education far beyond its detailed analysis of how the Establishment did for Corbyn. A new world awaits, but ominously.

    2. What is different is the internal report and how popular was the response in 2015 to JC
      At the North East hustings I walked in a Andy Burnham supporter and thinking JC was a complete outlier, I walked out knowing JC was the only candidate with an original thought in his head and the only one offering a real choice to the electorate
      I sincerely hope China takes Taiwan next, anything that brings down the kleptocracy is fine by me, off with their heads

  3. You notice how many successful people hate the notion of a new working class intelligatentia. This is the logical step when you send your kids to fee paying schools.

    1. Its called pulling the ladder up behind you, ensuring your status and new found wealth cannot be diluted by others – so much for social mobility, which is now dire in the UK.This attitude is prevails among Centrists, and who can blame them, i mean many are absolute planks if we are honest and Ms Rayner is a class act at it.

  4. I remember Wilson saying there were “dark forces” or some similar
    phrase to describe a possible right wing coup. Im not sure if he was
    correct about an organised coup against him – that was possibly
    because of the onset of his dementia – but there was the ever present
    right wing intolerance and smears. However the rest of the article
    is completely correct.

    A slightly more hopeful outlook now is the ability of ordinary people
    to organise themselves. The pandemic has made it possible for
    those people to meet via Zoom and the like. In some ways the situation
    is as it was during WW2 with (eg) neighbour-hoods organising places
    of safety for themselves during the Blitz when the Govt proved inept.
    These are not always tied to a political party and an example was
    revealed today of a young man taking photographs to indicate dire
    housing conditions. He then made them available via social media
    – resulting in complaints about housing being responded to and not
    ignored.

    1. Holby FM….I have been reading about the conservative plan to bring in a requirement for English and maths to a certain A level or equivalent in GCSE.before being allowed to borrow money for university education.Now as you probably know that I am not a great authority on education as I deliberately avoided it until later in life.Your opinion might be very useful on this latest tory idea that excludes once again.

  5. Oh, come on, guys & gals, it’s a joke. Angela Rayner’s famous for her sense of humour.

    Remember when she told that joke about ‘shoot first, ask questions later’, while talking to the comedian Matt Forde? How the audience roared with laughter – and they did.

    This is, just, another of those jokes, in the same vein.

    She learned her patter and routine, while on tour, supporting Jeremy Corbyn. Now, she’s, just, refining her act with the master-joker – Keir Starmer. Everyone knows what a master-bater he is.

    She’ll make a fine leader of Southbank Labour, at some point. She has all the qualities needed.

    Let’s give her a chance.

    *sarcasm*

  6. And so the de Nazification of the Dombass region as started.
    Ukrainian aggression will show the Ukrainian fascists that they cant rely on uncle sam or a Nato poodle.I only hope that bloodshed can be kept to a minimum and all sides realise that War with the Superpowers of USA,Russia or China is absolute madness and must never happen.We all know that only the people suffer in wars…never the warmongering politicians.

  7. At least we are unlikely to have to worry about just how bad they would be in power.

  8. I think Skwawkbox summed up the New Statesman article one word – excruciating. Reading about it made me feel sick- genuinely.
    This woman is self interested and unprincipled. She stood beside a tearful Joanne Baxter who, during the coup, said she had been “threatened” at the NEC meeting to decide if Jeremy should be automatically on the ballot paper. It turned out the “threats” were threats of legal action if the NEC broke the rules. However Baxter and Rayner and other unsavoury elements in the PLP and on the NEC used this “threat” to further the smear that Jeremy and his supporters were thugs, scum, bullies etc
    On the day designated by the UN as Palestine Solidarity Day Rayner attended an “up yours” event organised by the Labour Friends of Israel and the JLM and promised those present that SHE would expel thousands and thousands of “antisemites” from the party. This was despite the fact that the number of people found to have been guilty of antisemitism was approx 300. This showed clearly she was willing to perpetuate the smear that anyone ( including Jewish people) who is appalled by the vicious and uncivilised treatment of Palestinians by Israel is an antisemite and their criticism of Israel in this regard is motivated by hatred of Jews’
    Then we had her advocacy of a shoot first ask questions later policy in respect anyone who is suspected of being a terrorist. If it turns out that all some poor sod lying dead on the pavement had in his backpack was his lunch then too bad according to Rayner – this is worse than disgusting and unprincipled. It is evidence of a total disregard for human life. God knows what this woman would do to the old and sick if she ever was in government – it doesn’t bear thinking about.
    Angela Rayner is a total disgrace who has brought the party into disrepute and she should be immediately suspended and have the whip withdrawn. It won’t happen of course, not in Starmers Labour.

  9. The man who introduced student tuition fees also reckoned in 2014 that we should pal up with PUTin, forget UKraine, and fight radical Islam. Maybe he and Vlad could have adjoining cells in the Hague? They would then each have someone as batshit crazy as themselves to talk to. And to think this is the man that Starmer worships?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27122008

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