The Deputy Prime Minister said she saw a flaw with the Reform UK leader’s ‘good ideas’.
Angela Rayner is pushing for Labour to tackle Nigel Farage by leaning more to the left politically in a bid to appeal to lower-income supporters who switched to Reform UK in droves during the last round of local elections. Labour, as well as the Conservatives, suffered a heavy defeat to Reform UK at the ballot box on May 1, with Ms Rayner’s party also losing a parliamentary seat to Nigel Farage‘s party in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election.
But with the country on course for a potential record year of illegal migrant small boat crossings in the Channel, Ms Rayner reportedly believes her party should compete with Reform UK not on immigration but in the battleground of the economy. Writing in the Telegraph, founding partner of policy research agency Public First James Frayne said the Deputy Prime Minister wants to focus on squeezing the rich and middle classes and supporting lower-income families.
Ms Rayner called out Mr Farage during an interview with Sky News at the weekend, where she said: “Nigel Farage comes up with lots of ideas, they’re not necessarily good ideas, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to pay for them.”
A political commentator has said Ms Rayner may be Mr Farage’s biggest threat (Image: Getty )
And Mr Frayne writes that “a fascinating alternative strategy is now being pushed” by Ms Rayner, who he said “is recommending forcing Farage on to territory favoured by the Left”.
Mr Frayne continued by saying that a memo seen by the Telegraph from Ms Rayner set out “radical ideas to raise tax revenue and negate the need for further spending reductions”.
He added: “While some of the options set out in the memo included cutting welfare for new migrants, most were targeted at squeezing money out of the middle class, in particular by restricting their child benefits and cutting tax allowances.”
However, Mr Frayne noted that cutting child benefit would “play badly” with some voters, but he said positioning Labour as a supporter of the less well off could open an “ideological divide” in Reform UK’s support base.
Ms Rayner is understood to want to tackle Reform UK on finances rather than immigration (Image: Getty )
Speaking on Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, Ms Rayner said Nigel Farage does not know how he would pay for scrapping the two-child benefit cap and restoring the winter fuel payment to all pensioners.
Lifting the cap “might be a signal, but it’s not a silver bullet”, Ms Rayner added.
She told Sky News: “It’s not going to alleviate the levels of child poverty. There is a number of factors: people’s wages not increasing, their employment being insecure, the cost-of-living crisis that we face, their bills going up, and their housing costs have gone up.
“So it’s not one particular element that is going to safeguard people from the poverty we’ve seen after 14 years of the Conservatives.
“But I do know that having a good job that pays well allows you to open doors and opportunities for you to have a family and to do well in life.”
Mr Farage, however, is not expected to take any new tactics from Labour lying down, and it’s expected he will launch a direct attack on “unpatriotic” and “out-of-touch” Sir Keir Starmer, as he positions Reform UK as the true opposition to Labour.
The Reform leader will use a major speech on Tuesday to accuse the Prime Minister of “betrayal” over his deal with the European Union and the handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
Allies said it was a “coming-of-age moment” for Reform after its successes in May’s council contests and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, which demonstrated that backing the party at the ballot box was not a wasted vote.
