Sorry prime minister, Rayner will soon find her voice again

Keir Starmer will have noted one moment at Labour's annual conference in Liverpool.

- JOHN RENTOUL

When Wes Streeting, the health secretary, paid tribute to Angela Rayner and said, “We need her back,” the roar of approval in the hall sounded like an echo from the future. The former deputy prime minister has been quiet since her resignation on 5 September, but now she is going to find her voice again. She intends to exercise her right to make a resignation statement in the House of Commons next week.

“Rayner is incapable of being boring and probably has a lot to say,” commented the New Statesman, which broke the news.

Which is true, although resignation statements in parliament have been overvalued since Geoffrey Howe’s historic “broken cricket bats” in 1990, which lit the fuse for the ousting of Margaret Thatcher.

I suspect that Rayner will be exaggeratedly loyal to Starmer, while positioning herself slightly to his left. That seems the most promising route to a comeback in a party that values unity but which thinks that the prime minister has gone too far to the right.

It is, after all, the position that seems likely to deliver Rayner’s vacated deputy leadership of the party to Lucy Powell against Bridget Phillipson, the government-approved candidate. (The result of that election will be announced next Saturday.)