The toughest call'

Can Starmer afford to sack Rayner over her stamp duty blunder?

- Jessica Elgot

Keir Starmer has a hard-won reputation for ruthlessness when it comes to dispensing with ministers who cause the government embarrassment. But the future of his deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, is the toughest call of its kind.

Every time Starmer has been confronted with this type of decision, his instinct has been to cut loose. But his praise for Rayner was extravagant at prime minister's questions and sympathetic about her family circumstances that led to the error on stamp duty. So might he break the habit of a lifetime and back his beleaguered deputy?

Scholars of recent history may suggest otherwise. Starmer has always chosen the most brutal path when a minister or aide's standards fall short. Within his first few months as leader, he brushed aside any early efforts towards party unity: he fired his leadership rival Rebecca Long-Bailey for tweets endorsing a controversial interview with Maxine Peake and later removed the whip from Jeremy Corbyn after the Equality and Human Rights Commission's investigation into antisemitism.