The Times - UK (2022-06-11)

the times | Saturday June 11 2022 2GM 11

News

Sir Keir Starmer looks too much like a

lawyer in public appearances and

should “put some more welly” into

speeches, his deputy has said.

Angela Rayner said her boss was

“such a funny character” when there

was “not a camera in his face” but in

public often presented himself as un-

emotional.

“I do think some of his conditioning

when he was a lawyer... sometimes he

takes the emotion out of it and he puts

the strategic stuff in,” she told Newscast

on the BBC. “And I think, ‘No, put some

more welly into it!’

“I’ll go in with two boots — you know

what I mean? Whereas Keir is a bit

more sort of, ‘I’ll go in with the strategic

case and the detail’. He cross-examines

in a very forensic way, which I think

some people prefer that style, by the

way. Other people think I’m too brash

and I should tone myself down.”

Starmer’s appearance during prime

minister’s questions this week raised

eyebrows as the Labour leader, days

after two in five Tory MPs voted to

remove Johnson, chose to focus on the

government’s record on

the NHS.

Rayner insisted that it

had been a “good per-

formance”, but said:

“The way in which

I’d have gone for

Boris is probably

slightly different to

how Keir does it.”

Rayner described

herself as being “very

pro-industrial rela-

tions” when asked

whether she sup-

ported strike action

on the rail network

this month.

Members of the

Rail, Maritime and

Transport Workers

(RMT) union will

attempt to cripple the

network for three days in

Angela Rayner with her

leader, Sir Keir Starmer

News

leadership rests on a knife edge

Stop dressing like

a lawyer, Rayner

advises Starmer

a dispute over pay and redundancies.

The union has made donations worth

£5,700 to Rayner. The Labour deputy

leader has been a vocal supporter of the

RMT’s previous plans for strike action.

She blamed the government for the

present dispute and defended the work-

ers’ right to strike.

“I’m very pro-industrial relations. As

a former trade union official, I can tell

you that no one goes on strike at a

whim,” she said. “I’m hopeful they will

come to an agreement. What we don’t

want to see is people having to lose a

day’s pay to take strike action that they

can’t afford to take, and we don’t want to

see the disruption to the public.”

A focus group this week in the red

wall constituency of Wakefield, where a

by-election will be held on June 23, sug-

gested that Starmer was failing to ap-

peal to former Tory voters. It involved

people who had voted Conservative for

the first time in 2019 and was conduct-

ed by Kekst CNC for Times Radio.

Of the eight voters, five said they

would not vote Tory again while

Johnson was leader. However, they said

that Starmer was a barrier to them

switching back to Labour.

The voters described

Starmer as “weak”, a

“slippery slimeball” and

“someone who op-

poses for opposi-

tion’s sake”.

Starmer has

staked his lead-

ership on an in-

vestigation by

Durham police

into whether he

broke lockdown

rules by having a

beer and a curry

while campaigning

for the local elec-

tions last year.

Rayner, who was

also at the event, said

she was confident that

neither of them would

be fined.

Lack of clear position on

strikes will raise fears

about Labour, leading

article, page 29

George Grylls Political Reporter

Royal Cornwall Show in Wadebridge. He was joined at the event by three Conservative MPs representing the county

CORNWALL LIVE/BPM MEDIA

The education secretary is facing accu-

sations of being hoodwinked by the

civil service “blob” after he signed off on

a government bill that could reverse

part of the government’s school reform

programme.

Nadhim Zahawi approved legislation

this year designed to pave the way for

every school to become part of an aca-

demy trust outside the direct control of

Whitehall and local authorities.

The bill has been strongly criticised

by former Conservative and Labour

education ministers in the House of

Lords, who say that far from giving

schools greater freedoms it will allow

officials in the Department for Educa-

tion to micromanage academies across

Downing Street defends

Sunak on debt payments

Mehreen Khan, Simon Cable

Zahawi ‘hoodwinked by civil service’

the country. The critics include the

Conservatives Lord Agnew of Oulton

and Lord Nash, and Lord Adonis, the

Labour peer, who pioneered the aca-

demy programme.

Lord Baker of Dorking, the former

Tory education secretary, described it

as an “enormous grab for power by

Whitehall”, saying it was “quite amaz-

ing” that ministers had agreed to provi-

sions written into the bill.

These include giving officials the

powers to intervene in the running of

academies in areas including proce-

dures and criteria for admission, the

suitability of staff, spending, and what is

taught beyond the national curriculum.

Tory critics have accused Zahawi and

Baroness Barran, the schools minister,

of allowing civil servants to “make

government policy over the heads of

ministers”.

This has been denied by senior gov-

ernment sources. They said they were

well aware of the clauses in the bill but

that a government review of academy

powers would ensure that they could

not be misused.

Adonis said: “I simply don’t under-

stand how Zahawi could have agreed to

this. It would utterly destroy the princi-

ple of self-governing schools.”

Another critic said they believed

ministers had been “bamboozled” by

officials into including the clauses.

They described the department of edu-

cation “blob” as being like a “bulldozer”.

The peers have tabled an amend-

ment that would strip the bill of all its

clauses relating to academy freedoms.

Oliver Wright Policy Editor

The government has accused one of

the UK’s most respected economic

think tanks of “implausible” calcula-

tions suggesting Rishi Sunak wasted

£11 billion on debt interest payments.

A No 10 spokesman said figures from

the National Institute of Economic and

Social Research that calculate the rising

debt interest bill the Treasury has paid

on Bank of England reserves were not

accurate. “It’s simply not true and the

measures [the institute] proposed would

have come with huge economic risks,”

the spokesman said. “Specifically forc-

ing commercial banks to swap reserves

for gilts undermines the independence

of the Bank of England and would be an

act of financial repression.” The think

tank called on the chancellor last sum-

mer to take out inflation protection.

Failure to do so had saddled the UK with

“an enormous bill and heavy continuing

exposure to interest rate risk”, said Jagjit

Chadha, the institute’s director.

The spat highlights the division of

responsibilities over the UK’s quantita-

tive easing programme. It is controlled

by the central bank but decisions over

its impact on the public finances rest

with the Treasury.

Tories pay a price for being careless with

cash, Matthew Parris, page 25