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He added, “I would be surprised if she doesn’t find her way back to the top of politics.” The left-wing Labour MP quoted above concurred, calling her “too popular just to basically wither away on the vine.” The second former minister quoted above suggested Rayner could be a good corrective to “one small clique … running the whole show” at the top of government — and said many MP colleagues would still like to see her as party leader at some point in the future. However, that consensus was not universal. Rayner “made a big mistake which she ought to have avoided,” decried a second left-wing Labour MP. “She needs to be out of the front line for the foreseeable future.” Ultimately, there’s no guarantee a top-table return will happen, regardless of Rayner’s ambition. Tory MP Andrew Mitchell endured a decade in the wilderness between resigning as chief whip in 2012 and making a comeback in a senior Foreign Office job in 2022. “It’s true that in politics you should never say never about almost anything,” he reflected. “Always remember that the two irreducible qualities required for success are boundless energy and a skin as thick as a rhinoceros!” “Backbench or frontbench, elected office is not about us, but about our chance to change the lives of others,” Rayner concluded. “From wherever I sit on these benches, I will fight with everything I have to do exactly that.” Esther Webber contributed to this report.
