Sir Keir Starmer should use his deputy Angela Rayner more effectively because she is popular with the public, Harriet Harman has said.
Speaking to Sky News political editor Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Harman said the prime minister can use his deputy in two ways after she successfully led the effort behind the scenes to save the government’s welfare bill from being defeated in the Commons by rebel Labour MPs.
“There’s two ways he could respond to the situation about Angela Rayner,” she said.
“One is to feel defensive about it and that is somehow undermining his power.
“He’s got to find ways to sort of fence her in or to actually recognise that she’s a great communicator, that she’s popular, people like her, and actually he needs to pull her into his leadership and use her for what she can actually bring in.
“The way that Tony Blair used John Prescott to actually augment his premiership.”
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Despite the many U-turns the government was forced into over the welfare bill, it would ultimately have been worse if a Labour rebellion defeated the bill entirely on Tuesday.
Instead, it was voted through with a majority of 75 – still not a great result for a government with a working majority of 165.
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Tax rises to come
Baroness Harman, who was a minister under Tony Blair and interim Labour leader in 2015, also admitted the watered-down welfare bill will mean tax rises this autumn.
She said: “We are now utterly tipped into that territory which I think is incredibly unfortunate that we’ve got to be having the debate dominated now between now and the budget about tax raising.
“I think that is an extremely unfortunate consequence of what’s happened over the last few days and who knows where we’ll be, in terms of this so-called headroom, by the time we get to the autumn? But that’s now where the narrative is.
“So, the job has got much more difficult. But it’s a job they’ve got to do.”
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The original welfare bill reforms, including narrowing eligibility for the main disability benefit, were meant to save the government £5.5bn but the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the U-turns now mean they will cost the taxpayer.
This has prompted questions about Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s job security, but Baroness Harman backed Ms Reeves and said she is “the solution to the problem”.
