Voices: Angela Rayner is the Gordon Brown of this government

Angela Rayner has got it. That magic, hard-to-define quality that marks out a politician as capable of being prime minister. It shone through the dry civil-service language of her memo to Rachel Reeves that was leaked this week.

Obviously, she didn’t write it herself. It was written by a policy wonk with such familiarity with Treasury Budget submissions that they might have been a Treasury official at some point. But she authored the politics behind it.

The message was simple: soak the rich and be tough on immigration. She was helped by The Daily Telegraph publishing extracts from her document over two days, with the first part of the message on day one and the second part on day two.

On day one, a left-wing message, but a pragmatic one: a number of technical measures that would raise small but worthwhile sums from the better-off. On day two, a socially conservative message: restricting universal credit and the state pension for immigrants who have been here for between five and 10 years.

This was how Gordon Brown used to operate against Tony Blair. More than two decades later, former denizens of No 10 still wince at the memory of a 40-page document arriving from the Treasury opposing the plan for foundation hospitals at the last moment. It wasn’t leaked, but Brown’s objections were made known to journalists.

Rayner is like Brown in that she has been the heir presumptive to the Labour leader from the start. This was partly obscured by the Wes Streeting fan club, of which Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister’s chief of staff, and I are members. But the Survation polls for Labour List of party members last month made it clear that she would win easily against him.

Like Brown, she is always on manoeuvres, advertising her position to the left of the prime minister, building alliances – including a surprising one with Blair himself – and coming up with ideas. Rayner’s latest ideas are not ones that Reeves asked for, but they will allow the deputy prime minister to take some of the credit for them when the chancellor announces similar measures in the autumn Budget.

Rayner is better at politics than Brown because she is more convincingly loyal. She has a good routine about how she and Keir Starmer are different but complementary. Brown could hardly ever bring himself to say anything positive about Blair, and his conduct towards the prime minister in private was often graceless.

Rayner, on the other hand, is disarmingly personable, which, combined with her sharp political instinct, makes her a formidable opponent.

Her leadership qualities first showed when she was unexpectedly appointed shadow education secretary by Jeremy Corbyn in 2016. Lucy Powell had joined the mass resignation of shadow ministers who tried to oust Corbyn after what they saw as his sabotage of the EU referendum campaign. Pat Glass replaced her in the education brief but resigned after two days for personal reasons. So Rayner, just 36 and an MP for 14 months, took over.

She seemed to be a Corbynite, but had nominated Andy Burnham for the leadership the year before. She was the only member of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet who said nice things about Blair, and she brought a refreshingly New Labour tone to some of the things she said about schools.

If you want to know how good she is at politics, watch the video of Starmer being, as he later admitted, “overly rude” to Liz Saville Roberts, the Commons leader of Plaid Cymru. He was rude, but so was her question and his reply was funny. Reeves, on one side of him, laughed spontaneously. Rayner, on the other, sat stony faced.

That is the mark of someone who has “it”. So, if something happened to Starmer tomorrow – at this point I always quote the delicate wording of the Labour Party rule book: if he “becomes permanently unavailable” – Rayner would succeed him.

But otherwise, she is in for a long wait, as Brown was. This government is not yet a year old. Labour MPs are unhappy and there will be rebellions over welfare cuts and the Chagos treaty, but they will not threaten Starmer’s survival in office.

As well as containing euphemistic language about leadership vacancies, the party rule book makes it difficult to get rid of a leader. Nothing as easy as MPs writing secret letters, as is the Tory way.

A big difference between Rayner and Brown, apart from their personalities, though, is that she is not chancellor of the exchequer. She does not command the power of the Treasury over other departments.

A paradoxical sign of her weakness was the front-page headline in Saturday’s Daily Mail: “Rayner on the rampage.” The story is that Rayner is furious that her house building budget has been squeezed by Reeves. Rayner knows that her target of 1.5m new homes in five years is impossible, and wants to make sure that she does not get the blame for missing it.

We saw a hint of the frustrations below the surface when Matthew Pennycook, Rayner’s junior housing minister, criticised Reeves in March for taking free tickets to see Sabrina Carpenter: “I don’t personally think it’s appropriate; if I want to go to a concert at the O2 I’ll pay for it.”

The other important difference between Rayner and Brown is that Rayner could well lose her Ashton-under-Lyne seat in Greater Manchester at the next election. Seat-by-seat models show it falling to Reform if Nigel Farage’s party is polling near current levels. No wonder Rayner’s letter to Reeves set out policies that appeal to Reform-minded voters: left-wing on tax and tough on immigration.

Brown spent 13 years in a state of dauphin-anxiety, wanting and expecting the crown to come to him, ever-fearful that Blair would offer it and then take it back, as he did, or that a rival would emerge to steal it from him at the last moment.

Rayner has waited for five years now; she may have many more years to find out if it is snatched from her grasp, or if, like Brown, she finally succeeds, only to discover that she has exhausted herself in the effort and cannot quite remember what she wanted it for.