‘Rayner for leader’ site proves race to succeed Starmer is well under way
As Keir Starmer fights for his political life, the contest to replace him has already begun,The prime minister was already under pressure when the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, called for on Monday a change of prime minister,Sarwar’s comments followed the resignations from Downing Street of Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, and Tim Allan, his communications director,Now the revelation that a website claiming to launch a leadership campaign for Angela Rayner was briefly published last month has added to speculation about when the prime minister could go and who may replace him,As the phoney war has gathered pace in recent weeks, allies of Rayner and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have been taking aim at each other.
“Anyone that has any association with Peter Mandelson should be nowhere near government,” Steve Wright, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, told the BBC on Sunday, in an apparent swipe at Streeting, who has long been close to the former Labour politician and diplomat.Rosena Allin-Khan, the Labour MP for Tooting, told the same programme: “Of course, there are people in cabinet who need to question their own positions, because they were very close to people like Peter Mandelson.They may have known what was going on, who knows.But there are a couple in cabinet … and they know who they are.”Allies of Streeting have hit back, accusing Rayner’s friends of trying to distract from her own political difficulties given tax officials are yet to decide whether the former deputy prime minister underpaid stamp duty when purchasing a flat in Hove last year.
“The truth is Wes wasn’t very close to Mandelson, their relationship has been wildly overwritten.It’s not like Wes was invited to his wedding,” one of the health secretary’s allies said.Streeting insisted on Monday he was not pushing for the resignation of the prime minister, saying: “Keir Starmer doesn’t need to resign … Give Keir a chance.”But the lack of a vacancy has not stopped allies of the leading candidates touting the credentials of their favoured contenders.Friends of Rayner have told reporters she is “ready” to run should Starmer step down.
One senior Labour figure recently told the Guardian: “Angela says she took the scars for Jeremy Corbyn, she took the scars for Keir Starmer, and so the next time she takes the scars it will be for herself.”The Sunday Times quoted one friend of Rayner as saying MPs who were “frothing at the mouth” at the chance to install Streeting as leader were “mad because he has been damaged by association with Mandy [Mandelson]”.Those close to Streeting accuse these Rayner allies of exacerbating divides within the party.One said over the weekend: “The Labour party is pretty sick of the toxic briefing culture in No 10 and will not want to bring in something even more nasty.”Streeting and Rayner are not the only two potential candidates being talked about in Westminster.
Some on the soft left of the party, who would normally be Rayner allies, are concerned about polls that show she is one of the least popular Labour figures with the public at large.“A lot of her friends, people who know her well and love her, just think she is fundamentally unelectable,” one said.The person suggested the deputy Labour leader, Lucy Powell, the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, or the defence secretary, John Healey, could all be alternative candidates.Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, has not given up hope of returning to the Commons, having been blocked from standing in the Gorton and Denton byelection.However, a leadership contest in the next few weeks will be too early for him given the party leader must be drawn from the ranks of sitting MPs.
Those close to Miliband say he does not want to lead the party again, having lost the 2015 election, though the Sun on Sunday quoted one Labour source as saying: “Ed is preparing to run again.He has told people, despite what he says when he is interviewed.”Some in the party believe Shabana Mahmood, who has conservative social views but economic views on the left of the party, would be the best successor.Her standing among Labour members has been hit, however, by the tough stance she has taken on immigration as home secretary.Others despair at the options from the top of the party as it stands and so are looking to the more junior ranks of recently elected MPs.
One unlikely candidate being talked up by some among the 2024 intake is Al Carns, a former Royal Marines officer.He has many admirers inside and outside the party.“Carns understands about building a team and could do certain things that most MPs couldn’t do,” one political expert recently said.Unfortunately for Carns that expert was Boris Johnson’s former chief of staff Dominic Cummings.The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know.
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Barclays boss ‘shocked’ by Epstein revelations; BP annual profits slump 16% – as it happened
The chief executive of Barclays has said he is “deeply dismayed and shocked” at the “depravity and the corruption” revealed in the Epstein files, as the bank deals with the fallout of its ex-boss Jes Staley’s ties to the convicted child sex offender.In his first public comments on the matter since the US Department of Justice began publishing documents related to Jeffrey Epstein in December, CS Venkatakrishnan said his thoughts went out to the victims of Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting child sex trafficking charges. He said:I’m very, very deeply dismayed and shocked by the moral depravity and the corruption that you’re reading about in the latest set of instalments. You know, my heart really goes out to victims of this scandal and these crimes.However, the Barclays boss – speaking as the bank reported annual profits – stopped short of commenting directly on allegations against his predecessor, Staley
AstraZeneca CEO hails NHS drug price deal but keeps pause on £200m UK investment
The boss of Britain’s biggest pharmaceutical company has said the government’s recent drug pricing deal is a “very positive step” but is unlikely to unfreeze a paused £200m investment in Cambridge.AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, suggested that a UK-US deal on NHS pricing agreed in December would not be “sufficient” to restart the project to build a research site in the east of England, which was paused in September.Soriot, who has rebuilt the company’s drugs pipeline since 2012 and turned it into the UK’s most valuable listed business, also described the US as “the most attractive market in the world”.During Keir Starmer’s visit to Beijing two weeks ago, AstraZeneca announced $15bn (£11bn) of investments in China, its second-biggest market, and is also pouring $50bn into US factories and labs by 2030.The British drugmaker listed its shares in New York and they began trading on 2 February, but it kept its main stock listing in London
Will the Gulf’s push for its own AI succeed?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. Today in tech, we’re discussing the Persian Gulf countries making a play for sovereignty over their own artificial intelligence in response to an unstable United States. That, and US tech giants’ plans to spend more than $600bn this year alone.I spent most of last week in Doha at the Web Summit Qatar, the Persian Gulf’s new version of the popular annual tech conference. One theme stood out among the speeches I watched and the conversations I had: sovereignty
Apple and Google pledge not to discriminate against third-party apps in UK deal
Apple and Google have committed to avoid discriminating against apps that compete with their own products under an agreement with the UK’s competition watchdog, as they avoided legally binding measures for their mobile platforms.The US tech companies have vowed to be more transparent about vetting third-party apps before letting them on their app stores and not discriminate against third-party apps in app search rankings.They have also agreed not to use data from third-party apps unfairly, such as using information about app updates to tweak their own offerings.Apple has also committed to giving app developers an easier means of requesting use of its features such as the digital wallet, and live translation for AirPod users.The commitments have been secured as part of a new regulatory regime overseen by the Competition and Markets Authority, (CMA), which has the power to impose changes on how Apple and Google operate their mobile platforms after deciding last year that they had “substantial, entrenched” market power
Winter Olympics 2026 day four: more golds for Italy, Norway and Sweden; GB curling heartache – live
This is our top 10 after two runs:It’ll take something for oner of the top two to avoid taking gold; there’s a battle for that, then a battle for bronze.Anyroad up, it’s 0-0 with 10 to go in the first; elsewhere, we’re four minutes away from the resumption of the women’s luge singles. I should say, currently Italy lead Germany by a point, so if this match is a draw they’ll finish higher and take on second place in Group A.Both teams are already into the last eight, but the winner will avoid the winner of Group A – though you’d not back either to even run USA or Canada, the two teams in contention, close.We’re under way in our Italy v Germany Group B women’s ice hockey…Goodness me
‘My needles are waiting’: Ben Ogden credits knitting habit after cross-country silver
Ben Ogden delivered the most significant result in US men’s cross-country skiing in decades on Tuesday afternoon, winning Olympic silver in the men’s sprint classic at the Milano Cortina Games to end a 50-year medal drought.The mustachioed 25-year-old finished in 3min 40.61sec after surging through the final with his trademark classical technique, less than a second behind Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who secured the seventh Olympic gold medal of his career in 3:39.74. Klæbo’s teammate Oskar Opstad Vike took bronze after climbing from 20th in qualifying to the podium
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