Angela Rayner has urged Labour colleagues to “step up” and make the case for why the party should be in power as the government attempts to draw a line under a tumultuous first year in office and shift towards a more upbeat approach.
The deputy prime minister urged Labour MPs to focus on the party’s achievements over the last 12 months rather than always thinking about failures, adding they should all be “message carriers” for what had been done well.
But she said there were big challenges ahead, with changes in areas such as infrastructure investment and planning taking years to bear fruit. “These things take time to lead in. That’s the challenge with politics. Everybody wants something mañana. It’s like, gotta have it immediately.”
In an interview with the Guardian as MPs prepared to break for the summer recess, Rayner also said she was unafraid of Nigel Farage, that tough action against rebellious Labour MPs was “justified” and that fixing the “awful” Send system for children was an urgent priority.
She added that it was a “moral mission” for Labour to bring down child poverty, she would feel personally wounded if the government did not hit its 1.5m new homes target and that it was determined to “break the doom loop” of low economic growth and high taxes suffered for years.
However, speaking in her office in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Rayner made clear that she expected her colleagues, from Keir Starmer down, to do a better job of arguing for what they believed in.
“We all have to step up and make that case. It’s the job of all of us in the wider Labour movement,” she said, citing achievements such as falling NHS waiting lists, funding increases for housing and rising wages.
“I often go to Labour fundraisers and joke that the Tories will do 4% of their manifesto, and then go on about that 4% as if they’ve delivered the whole lot. In our Labour movement, we’ll do 96% of it, but we’ll go on about the 4% that we never managed to achieve.
“It’s a mindset that we have … We’re always thinking about what we didn’t get, as opposed to all the huge achievements that we’re making. Our whole movement is message carriers. And if we’re not going to talk about these huge achievements, then who is?”
Labour has characterised Reform UK as its main opposition at the next election, even though it has just four MPs. Rayner said they had to be “held to account” for making “wild promises” to the public they would not be able to deliver on, calling Farage a “snake oil salesman”.
“Politics can make a real difference to people’s lives, but it takes time to change, to bring about that fundamental change that people are so desperate to see. That’s what this Labour government is doing,” she said.
“It’s not short-termism on the back of a fag packet, on some billboard. It’s actually the fundamental reforms that will get Britain back on track … instead of people feeling at the moment like everything is broken and nothing can be fixed.”
Angela Rayner in her office at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
Rayner defended the decision to strip the Labour whip from four “persistent” rebel MPs, even though No 10 had said it would try to improve relations with backbenchers after they forced it into a major U-turn over welfare cuts.
“I think it’s justified. If you’re constantly organising against your Labour government then that’s a whipping issue for the chief whip, and that’s as old as time,” she said.
But she acknowledged the government had to find ways of giving MPs “opportunities to air concerns” and be part of the collective decision-making process.
Labour MPs are concerned that ministers will approach plans for children’s special educational needs and disabilities (Send) in the same way as they did changes to welfare, which were presented as a cost-saving move.
But Rayner, who has two children who have been through the Send process, said the system was “awful” for parents and had to be fixed, adding that she knew the government needed to bring families, schools, and MPs with them on the difficult path to reform.
Her own department has an additional interest because councils, which provide much of the support, were granted two further years until March 2028 to keep Send deficits off their books, giving them a strict deadline.
“Can we do it in the time? We have to, because so many young people are being let down at the moment, because the system is not catching people’s needs early on. That system is awful for parents.
“I was in the system for a long time … Parents who are trapped in it are constantly, for years, fighting to get their child support that they need. We’ve got to fix this. Often we’re spending huge sums of money and we’re still not delivering the outcomes for those young people.”
Labour MPs are also desperate for the government to deliver on its pledge to tackle child poverty, with Starmer understood to be keen to lift the two-child benefit cap if affordable, although that has been made harder because of the welfare U-turn.
Rayner said it was a “moral mission” and “absolutely critical” for a Labour government to bring down child poverty but, despite experts suggesting scrapping the cap would be the most cost-effective way to do so, she added there was “no single lever” to address problem.
She has announced a near doubling of government spending on affordable housing in England, up to £40bn of grants over 10 years, and bringing its target to build 1.5m new homes by 2029 closer.
She said she would feel wounded if the target was not hit, even though experts say it will be extremely difficult. “I would be wounded, even though it is a real stretch target. Everyone says it’s really difficult to get there, but I’m determined to,” she said.
Just months after Rayner urged Rachel Reeves to consider a series of wealth tax rises, underscoring unease over the chancellor’s tight spending plans, she said the country needed to get out of the “doom loop” of low growth and high taxes it had seen under the Tories.
While she refused to be drawn on whether it was inevitable that taxes would have to rise this autumn, when asked about her leaked memo to the chancellor, she said the country “can’t continue” as it is.
“I think we will get there. But we can’t continue on this doom loop of, you know, low, low growth and high taxes, we have to find a way through this,” she added, highlighting capital investment and trade deals which both supported the economy.
“That’s how you grow the economy in the long run, and where people feel better off as a result of it. That’s the turnaround that we’re doing that the previous government didn’t do, and why we’ve been in this constant doom loop.”
Before Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK this autumn Rayner, who had previously called the US president “a buffoon” who had “no place in the White House”, said she respected the mandate of elected politicians but was prepared to “challenge respectfully”.
And just a week after Unite the trade union voted to suspend her membership and rethink its ties with the Labour party over the Birmingham bin strikes, Rayner said that while she was proud of her own trade union roots she answered to working people and her constituents. “That’s my test. Not what a general secretary says.”