More important things outside Westminster bubble than Mandelson – Rayner

Angela Rayner has urged the Government to “take bold action” as a means of keeping the confidence of the British public.

The former deputy prime minister also insisted the media and her political colleagues needed to remember there was a “world outside and beyond the bubble”, as Westminster spent Tuesday gripped by the latest turns in the scandal surrounding Peter Mandelson.

Speaking at the National Growth Debate in central London on Tuesday evening, Ashton-under-Lyne MP Ms Rayner made reference to the day’s revelations about Lord Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to Washington DC.

Sir Olly Robbins, a sacked civil service mandarin, earlier gave evidence to a cross-party group of MPs about his part in giving Lord Mandelson security clearance for the role.

Ms Rayner claimed that she too had been “glued to my live feed this morning”, adding: “And I refer, of course to your panel, Louise Hague and Chris Curtis.”

Referring to the day’s events in Westminster, Ms Rayner added: “I’ll let this sink in to any journalists that are here: There’s some more important questions out there, and it’s on that note that I want to just take a moment at the end of the day to reflect on why all this matters, and to the world outside and beyond the bubble.”

She continued: “Right now, ordinary people feel that their lives are too hard and that the basics of a good life are unaffordable.

“They suspect that this is because of an economy and a system that is rigged in favour of vested interests, and they’re right.

“This affordability crisis has been decades in the making. Over and over ordinary people feel that they’ve paid the price for every crisis, the financial crash, austerity, Brexit, Covid.”

The Government must “go further” to help ordinary people, Ms Rayner said, after listing steps she took as a minister to strengthen renters rights and employment rights, as well as wider efforts by ministers to bring down living costs.

Ms Rayner added: “Now it’s time to go further.

“Creating jobs that are secure and that are fairly paid, making life more affordable and shifting the balance to communities is the growth strategy that I believe that we need right now.

“Stopping the extraction and the hoarding of wealth and power and letting ordinary people who are working to create the growth get the benefits of what they build tackling the rip offs.”

She later hit out at Labour’s opponents, telling the gathering: “Yet all of this was opposed by Reform and the Tories, and sometimes joined by the Greens as well.

“So called populists are not the solution. They’re part of the problem.

“There could not be a worse time to swallow the false answers that they offer.

“We haven’t yet seen the full impact of the Iran war but I think everyone here feels the dread of the consequences.

“This is exactly why we need to keep investing in renewable energy, so that we are not at the mercy of other people’s wars.

“Because as it is ordinary people fear that they will once again pay the price.”

The crisis surrounding the Iran war “calls for bold action”, she said, adding: “Let’s take the bold action.

“Let’s tell a bold story about how we’re tackling the immediate crisis and taking the first steps towards an economy that’s built for one interest that we should all serve, and that’s the British People.”

Media reports in recent days have suggested Ms Rayner has met with Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, amid rumblings of a challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour leadership.

But sources close to Ms Rayner suggested her Tuesday speech instead signalled she was open to a return to serving as a minister in Sir Keir’s Government.

Later, Chancellor Rachel Reeves insisted there is “no Labour leadership contest” when asked about the possibility of challengers to Sir Keir’s authority.

She also suggested holding such a contest could be economically damaging, adding: “I do not want to go down the route the Conservatives went down, of three prime ministers in five years and five chancellors, I think, during that timeline.

“Because that is one of the things that contributed to the instability and the lack of investment in the last Parliament, and that is exactly what we want to turn around.

“We promised stability, we said that economic growth being built on a platform of stability, investment and reform.

“But stability is the foundation of everything else, and that requires stable politics and stable economic policy as well.”