Prime Minister Rayner

Keir Starmer is to the right of Maggie Thatcher on many issues. He is socially aligned with JK Rowling. He will be incapable of keeping his caucus in line because most of Labour is center-left. The UK is looking at a very unstable government while he is prime minister. I think Angela Rayner will be Prime Minister sooner than most people expect. Unlike Starmer, she is a Europhile, pro-trans rights, not a habitual liar, and supports basic international human rights law.

Once Rayner is Prime Minister, the UK will finally return to the good policies it abandoned in 2010.

This is not a crazy idea…

Labour is a big tent party ranging from Euroskeptics like Starmer, who support Netanyahu, to politicians like Rayner, who support a real two state solution and rejoining the European Union. This is not a stable alliance.

We are going to see fierce debates in parliament between Labour MPs who differ fundamentally on the most pressing issues in British politics today.

If the average Labour MP is more like Rayner than Starmer, and at least on Brexit, most Labour voters are closer to Rayner than Starmer, we are going to see some unprecedented changes in the UK parliament.

Starmer’s selection of Rayner is similar to Obama’s selection of Biden as Vice President. When building a cabinet from a big tent party, which is what Labour is, you need to have members of your cabinet from across your party’s spectrum. That is what Starmer is doing. He ran on a platform similar to Rayner, which he abandoned. He had to select a Labour MP similar to most Labour voters to postpone the inevitable backlash from his party against his center-right policies.

Just as how Obama, who was almost progressive, had Joe Biden as his Vice President, Keir Starmer, who is more like the Tories than Liberal Democrats on just about everything, selected Angela Rayner, who is closer to the Lib Dems than Starmer.

This is why even though Starmer’s policies are generally abhorrent, the possibility of Angela Rayner as Prime Minister soon is a cause for celebration.