Angela Rayner has in parliament refused to deny claims she threatened to resign over missing her manifesto housing target. According to plugged-in sources in Lord Ashcroft’s biography of Starmer, Red Flag, “one occasion she threatened to resign because she felt she’d been set the impossible target of Labour building 1.5 million new homes.” The sources add that “it took a call from Tony Blair to talk her down.“ Guido identified Rayner’s issues with the ambitious target last summer…
In response to that Rayner’s team said at the time: “We do not recognise the claims made. Angela is proud to be serving as Deputy Prime Minister in Keir’s cabinet and delivering on Labour’s crystal clear commitment to build 1.5 million homes as part of our Plan for Change.” This is what is known as a thin-as-string denial…
In response to a written question from Kevin Hollinrake asking Rayner “whether she has had discussions with Tony Blair on the deliverability of the 1.5 million housebuilding target” her department replied: “The Deputy Prime Minister joined Tony Blair for a Q&A event in December 2024 at the Tony Blair Institute. This was an informal Q&A event which did not touch on details of government policy.” A non-denial, a swerve…
Reeves at the Spring Statement pinned much of the Labour’s required growth on Rayner’s housing policies. Despite Rayner’s enthusiasm for housing construction some in Labour see the 1.5 million manifesto target as a deliberate doomed-to-fail caper…
Speaking on Times Radio, former Home Secretary David Blunkett spoke about overdiagnosis of mental problems:
“Let’s distinguish those who are really severely mentally ill, diagnosed with things that require prolonged medical and diagnostic treatment. My wife and I talk about this a lot, because she’s a retired GP, about the fact that you can be sad without being ill. You can be momentarily depressed because your boyfriend or girlfriend’s just thrown you and you’re not mentally ill. You can even have mild issues, which can be dealt with with the right kind of support, but it doesn’t make you mentally ill. So we’ve got a real task, I think, to get the psychology, if you like, of this over. But there are things where you definitely need medical intervention, and there are other things where you need good friends, you need good connectivity, and you need a job.”