Angela Rayner’s Orchestrated Fall: A Corbyn-Like Political Assassination
by Jaffa Levy
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Published
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Angela Rayner said she resigned over a £40,000 underpayment of stamp duty when she bought a flat in Hove. But this was not a crime. It was a mistake that could have been rectified by simply repaying the money — something that happens thousands of times every year when people underpay HMRC. In most cases, that would have been the end of the matter.
The press, however, decided to make a hullabaloo out of it — a song and dance, an orchestrated attack. Narratives were spun, headlines piled on, and the drums began to roll.
Yet what was the substance? The ethics adviser said she should have sought better professional advice, and the newspapers branded her a hypocrite, especially as she was housing secretary. And then the drumbeat grew louder: the BBC, the Mail, the Guardian, the Times, all amplifying the same storyline until it became fatal.
Why was she hounded like this? Why did the narrative spin against her so relentlessly? There is a long list of ministers who have done far worse — from multimillion-pound tax scandals to open breaches of the ministerial code — and survived. But Rayner was treated differently.
This was not about £40,000. It was an orchestrated, Corbyn-like political assassination. The answer lies in the deeper workings of what is often called the power networks.
What is this Network
It is the network of permanent institutions and entrenched interests that outlast governments and set the boundaries of what politicians can do.
In Britain, this includes:
The security and intelligence agencies (MI5, MI6, GCHQ).
The civil service mandarinate, especially the Treasury.
The armed forces and defence establishment.
Media barons who own and shape the press.
The City of London financial elite.
Lobbying networks — above all, the highly organised pro-Israel lobby.
This system tolerates backbench dissenters and the occasional rebel voice. But it draws a hard line when a figure close to executive power — Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, or senior Cabinet — threatens its core interests.
It would be simplistic to imagine these networks as a single committee issuing orders. They rarely conspire but instead converge. As Noam Chomsky once told BBC journalist Andrew Marr: “I’m not saying you’re self-censoring. If you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.” Institutions select and promote those whose assumptions already align with prevailing orthodoxies. The result is not coordination but convergence: independent actors moving in the same direction because they share the same worldview.
Why Angela Rayner Was Different
Angela Rayner rose from care work and union organising to become Deputy Prime Minister. Her working-class roots, her plain speech, and her ties to unions made her popular with Labour members and voters who had long since tuned out polished technocrats.
But those same qualities made her unreliable to the establishment. Unlike Keir Starmer, she was not a safe pair of hands for Treasury orthodoxy or for the rigid pro-Israel line that Labour adopted after Corbyn’s fall.
Gaza stance. At first cautious, she later spoke more firmly about the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, under pressure from her Muslim constituents. At Cabinet level, such deviation was intolerable to the pro-Israel lobby.
Union links and class identity. She carried instincts that worried the financial and property elite. As housing secretary, she symbolised the threat of redistributive housing policy.
Succession risk. As Deputy PM, she was next in line if Starmer faltered. The idea of Rayner as Prime Minister was one the establishment would not tolerate.
How the Narrative Was Orchestrated
Once the stamp duty issue surfaced, the response was immediate and uniform: newspapers from the Mail to the Guardian ran the same storyline — “hypocrisy, integrity, resignation.” The BBC echoed it as headline news. No outlet dwelt on the obvious: repayment would have rectified the error completely, as it has in many other cases.
Compare her treatment to others: Nadhim Zahawi survived a £27 million tax settlement for months. Priti Patel kept her post after secret meetings with Israeli officials. Boris Johnson it was widely reported lied repeatedly and took donor cash for his flat — and carried on. In Rayner’s case, the narrative became a drumbeat. It was picked up, amplified, and presented as unavoidable. That is the hallmark of orchestration, not organic scandal.
Why She Had to Go
Her Gaza stance made her expendable to the pro-Israel lobby.
Her working-class authenticity and union ties made her unpredictable to the City and Whitehall.
Her position as Deputy PM meant that if Starmer fell, she was next in line — an outcome the establishment would never accept.
So the stamp duty “scandal” became the weapon. It was minor in substance but fatal in effect, because the system had decided she had to go.
The Pattern
Identify a deviation from orthodoxy.
Wait for a vulnerability.
Amplify it into a narrative.
Force resignation or delegitimise the figure.
The power networks tolerate dissent at the margins. It does not tolerate it in the corridors of real power.
Closing
Many in the media understand this. Many in Whitehall understand it. Many in the pro-Israel lobby will also see it clearly — because they work within it every day. And among them, there are people who are uneasy. They watched how Jeremy Corbyn was hounded, how the BBC and other outlets carried the line as if on cue, and they know it went beyond ordinary politics.
What looks like orchestration is often the product of convergence rather than conspiracy. As Chomsky explained to Andrew Marr, institutions tend to promote those who already share the system’s worldview. That is why journalists, civil servants, and ministers appear to move in lockstep: not because they meet in secret, but because the system has filtered out those who think differently.
Angela Rayner’s fall fits the same pattern. This was not about £40,000 of stamp duty. It was about power, orthodoxy, and who is allowed to get close to the top. Some inside the system are irritated by how openly it has played out. Others feel the discomfort of recognising a truth they cannot say out loud.
That truth is simple: the orthodoxy of Britain tolerates dissent at the margins, but it cannot tolerate it in the corridors of power.
Aftermath
The aftermath of Rayner’s removal is already telling. Her replacement as Deputy Prime Minister, David Lammy, is regarded as a far safer hand. Unlike Rayner, he carries no union base, no working-class unpredictability, and no constituency pressure that might force him to deviate on Gaza.
Lammy’s record speaks plainly: staunchly Atlanticist, strongly pro-Israel, firmly aligned with NATO and Washington. He is trusted by the very networks that distrusted Rayner.
And this matters for one reason above all. If Keir Starmer proves too unpopular to survive, Lammy now stands in the succession line. Where Rayner represented a risk — a potential Prime Minister who might not hold the orthodox line — Lammy represents continuity. His presence reassures the establishment that, whatever happens to Starmer, the leadership of the Labour Party remains firmly tethered to the interests of the United States, NATO, and Israel.
References
The ideas developed in this article are informed by works that examine the British media landscape, political institutions, and the influence of entrenched power networks. For background reading:
The BBC: Myth of a Public Service – Tom Mills
Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media – David Edwards & David Cromwell
The War Against the BBC – Patrick Barwise & Peter York
Post-Democracy – Colin Crouch
The Assault on Truth – Peter Oborne
Inside the Treasury: The Civil Service at the Heart of Power – Tony Wright
These works outline how entrenched institutions, media organisations, and political orthodoxies form a permanent structure of power beyond day-to-day party politics. Their concepts inform the framework used in this article.
