Punchy Rayner has hunger to lead that Prescott lacked

Keir Starmer has been prime minister for only four months, but Labour MPs can’t help themselves: they are already gossiping about who will be his successor.

- ANDREW GRICE

The chatter has started early partly because of the government’s rocky start, and even those with wagging tongues admit it is very premature.

Such speculation happens in all parties, and some Conservatives wonder aloud whether Kemi Badenoch will lead them into the next general election. Politics is a game of snakes and ladders. Its ambitious participants can’t resist asking each other who would take over if the leader fell under a bus – and, of course, thinking how it might affect their own prospects.

The death of John Prescott has highlighted the parallels between the former deputy PM and the current one – and fuelled the chatter in Labour land about whether Angela Rayner will go one step further than him by becoming PM. So have her confident performances when she has stood in for Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions. She has won brownie points among leftwingers and the trade unions by seeing off – for now, at least – a further dilution of the government’s plans to extend workers’ rights.

Prescott and Rayner both hailed from working-class, northern backgrounds and left school at 15 and 16 respectively. They moved from the trade union movement to politics and climbed the Labour ladder to become the party’s number two. Both felt frustrated when their backstory or the way they spoke eclipsed their policy achievements.