Rayner's pitch to return under Burnham cabinet - and the role she's tipped for
Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has urged the next government to “rewire” England by devolving power and money to town halls as she made her pitch to return as housing secretary.
In a speech at the London School of Economics, Rayner set out a vision for radical devolution that closely mirrored the agenda being championed by Makerfield MP Andy Burnham.
She told the audience that if councils cannot fix potholes, they have no hope of delivering the major regeneration schemes needed to transform a town’s high street.
Three families reflect on the early signs of the illness, which affected their parents.
They include the things they missed or dismissed, what they’d do differently and what they’d want other people in the same position to know.
One of the first incidents that rang alarm bells for Robert was his mum falling victim to a suspected scam from someone selling mattresses door-to-door.
She also started to struggle with cooking and making her special dishes she’d been making for decades without a problem.
We [had] just sort of played along with everything. But on one particularly bad day, I blurted it out over the phone, ‘Because you’ve got dementia, mum!’ She threatened to kill herself, which was very scary. Maybe it’s something I should have explained properly to her from the get go…
I think we missed some of the really early subtle signs.
Rosie’s mother was diagnosed with Young Onset Alzheimer’s Disease at 58 but some symptoms, like brain fog, were put down to the menopause.
She had become more forgetful, and was repeating herself, but as she had always “been scatty” it was dismissed.
It was on strange things like going to the same buffet.
Chloe was just 14 when her mum, Sarah, was diagnosed with young onset frontotemporal dementia, a rare form of the disease.
Another time Sarah, who was diagnosed in her forties, forgot how to boil an egg.
On Saturdays, when she’d usually go shopping, she’d go out and come straight back home, almost like she forgetting
what she was going out for.
Officials have drawn up contingency plans to cut further green levies from energy bills if prices remain high this winter, The i Paper has been told.
Several options are now circulating among Burnham’s transition team who are believed to be weighing up how to deliver on that pledge. A Treasury source said work on a package was ongoing to help with rising costs.
Burnham could remove remaining green levies from energy bills, funded through general taxation instead.
One proposal would be to raise the bank surcharge from its current 3 per cent.
Replace stamp duty, loosen fiscal rules and tax the capital gains uplift on inherited assets.
A written statement published by the Chancellor said the remaining sum would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.
The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.
Sir Keir Starmer’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan had one big bet at its heart: drones are the future of warfare.
American company Anduril makes the “Seabed Sentry“- a weighted cylinder that uses sensors and AI to monitor what is happening under the sea. They could be used to listen out for spying and sabotage by Russian submarines. They are far cheaper than crewed submarines using traditional sonar.
A dozen of the cylinders can be dropped onto the seabed at a time by an autonomous submarine, with the devices forming a network which communicate between themselves and listens out for undersea activity.
The UK is woefully unprepared with the Royal Navy in a desperate condition. Whoever sits in Downing Street come next September will need to address matters of defence, homeland and cyber defence especially, with urgency.
Electric flying taxis could be above the streets of London by 2028, a manufacturer has claimed. Here’s what you need to know.
Vertical Aerospace is still testing the aircraft and it will need to be approved by both the approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). But the company says the aim is for air taxis to become as cheap and convenient as ordering an Uber to the airport.
Writer Sadhbh O’Sullivan looked into her own forgotten subscriptions when she became a first-time buyer, and realised how much she was wasting on things she wasn’t using.
I’d long considered myself to be quite a reasonable spender.
But the hidden costs across her bank accounts, like free trials that hadn’t been cancelled and memberships for abandoned services, proved otherwise.
It was full of small amounts, £2.99 here, £4.50 there. These small amounts added up.
According to a Nationwide survey almost one in five Brits don’t use every platform they pay for.
The bank suggests they could save as much as £400 a year by ditching them.
National Trading Standards’ 2025 research found 4.7 million people were paying for subscriptions they didn’t know they’d signed up for.
In 2024, a government report found unused and unwanted subscriptions cost consumers up to £1.6bn a year.
Hunt them down
Banking apps usually list your ‘subscriptions’ separately from direct debits and standing orders so you can easily spot what you’re shelling out on.
Check everything
You can be debited through credit cards, E-payment services, your mobile phone bill, Apple Pay or Google Pay.
Don’t vow to use a subscription you’re not going to, even if you
have good intentions.
Many businesses have changed from monthly to annual payments so look further back.
Make sure to track any subscriptions you have kept so you can cancel them, if need be, in future.
But staff say many people treat their shops like a tip.
Here they share the most useful donations they get, and the
ones that drive them mad.
The quality of donations over the last year has diminished.
Claire Stockman, head of retail for St
Luke’s Hospice [pictured], says many donations include used items from fast fashion like Boohoo and Primark, which they cannot sell for more than £2, if at all.
of what comes into St Luke’s Hospice is unsellable, Stockman says.
She adds its soiled, damaged beyond
repair or smelly.
Harriet, a volunteer at Crisis in Dalston,
says people bring in clothes that are dirty and stained – things that they cannot sell
on Vinted.
She also sees dirty kitchenware and technology that no longer works.
There was a box donated after someone’s family had passed and in it were all these medals. I researched them and the whole collection ended up going for £2,340…
A good donation is anything new with tags on, anything that hasn’t been opened, or higher quality items.
Items that have been well looked after are more likely to sell and generate a better price for charity too.
Harriet adds that knick-knacks and wine glasses are surprise hits in her branch.
Here, psychologists, career consultants and sleep experts give their best advice on how
to beat the gloom that the
work week is looming…
Pave the way on Friday
Psychologist Maria-Teresa Daher-Cusack says to wrap up tasks and not to leave big or difficult things for Monday. And write a to-do list for the next week so you know what to expect when you return after the weekend.
Get outside early
Doctor Naheed Ali says getting out on a Sunday morning – not sleeping late – helps regulate the circadian rhythm that can become skewed over the weekend.
On Sunday spend time away from technology to allow yourself a personal reset away from doom scrolling.
Put yourself in the best position to rest by avoiding large meals, screens and caffeine.
If possible don’t stack your Mondays with high-pressure tasks.
Don’t just save joyful things for the weekend. On lunch breaks, try to do something you enjoy.
If the Sunday scaries are constant, listen to them. If every Sunday fills you with dread and nothing seems to quell it it’s worth asking if it’s the job, the culture or the career itself. No one should spend half their weekend bracing for impact… ” says Victoria McLean
But no country’s energy system is 100 per cent secure and large-scale blackouts, although rare, are possible.
Here’s how to prepare, and what could happen, if we do have a blackout.
If the UK’s power went down tomorrow, these are the ways it is likely to impact you first.
For EV owners that are already on the road, Professor Keith Bell, who works in electricity planning, recommends that those with an EV with reasonable charge use it as a generator, like your own store of electricity.
In the case of the power system going down, petrol isn’t a totally safe option as queues at petrol stations could be huge and places are likely to run out of fuel.
The longer the power takes to return the worse things are likely to get. In 2021 Storm Arwen physically damaged power lines across the UK.
During the 1977 New York blackout, which lasted 25 hours, there was civil unrest, resulting in widespread looting and arson, although intense heatwaves are thought to have exacerbated the situation.
To get updates during a power cut – a car radio can be used, but in severe weather it might be safer to stay inside.
A minimum of 2.5-3 litres of drinking water per person per day is recommended.
The Government recommends opting for torches over candles, for safety reasons.
The line was a near-verbatim echo of one used by Burnham in his speech in Manchester on Monday, when he also promised to “rewire” Britain and devolve power to the regions.
The overlap is too close to be accidental and comes as Burnham – now the clear frontrunner to succeed Sir Keir Starmer – puts the finishing touches to his cabinet line-up and prepares to build a government around the devolution agenda that has been called “Manchesterism”.
Rayner is understood to be positioning herself for a return to her old job as housing secretary after hostile briefings earlier this week suggested the Burnham camp was freezing her out.
It comes amid ongoing speculation about what role, if any, she will play in a Burnham-led government.
The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that she has been left on the sidelines of Burnham’s march to No 10, while other reports suggest she has been advising Burnham’s team on his plans to give mayors more powers.
Although the former deputy prime minister is not a member of Burnham’s inner circle, which includes former transport secretary Louise Haigh and Knowsley MP Anneliese Midgley, she is still expected to be given a job in his first cabinet.
Sources close to Rayner insist that no offer has been made by Burnham yet, although her allies claim she would welcome a return to her old job as housing secretary.
It comes less than a year after Rayner resigned as deputy prime minister and housing secretary after admitting she had underpaid stamp duty on a second home. Rayner said she took “full responsibility” for the error despite insisting it had been unintentional.
She was cleared by the HMRC in May following an investigation.
One Rayner ally said: “There have been reports that Rayner is being frozen out and there have been reports that she is advising Andy on devolution. The truth is somewhere in the middle.”
Burnham is understood to be weighing up several machinery of government changes, which could see the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Rayner’s old department, broken up.
Sources familiar with his thinking believe he could create a Ministry of Housing to underline his commitment to the “biggest council house building programme since the post-war” period. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport would be turned into a new super-department that would also take on responsibility for communities.
Rayner used a speech marking the New Economics Foundation’s 40th anniversary to set out an expansive vision for mayoral power, which some have interpreted as a pitch for her old job.
Much of the agenda echoed policies Burnham has been advancing in recent weeks.
Like the former Greater Manchester mayor, Rayner argued that economic growth depended on handing substantially more power to England’s regions, with metro mayors given greater control over transport, regeneration and public services.
Both have framed devolution not as an administrative reform but as the central mission of a future government.
Rayner said: “We have the worst combination of micro-management and control from the centre, without the resource or focus to make it effective. Whitehall empires hoard their own power.
“And layers of governance and bureaucracy, developed with the best of intentions, too often end with the triumph of process over purpose.
“I want to see that purpose restored. To truly get growth in every corner of the country and put more money into people’s pockets, we must rewire England by devolving power and money to the country as a whole.”
Rayner hailed Burnham’s Greater Manchester Bee Network as devolution’s “biggest success story outside London” and said the Government should commit to backing every mayor who wants a franchised bus network by the end of this Parliament, with fares payable through a system modelled on London’s Oyster card.
“We should put a line in the sand and be clear that government will back every mayor who wants a franchised bus network to have one by the end of this Parliament,” she said.
Rayner also waded into the row over Whitehall’s refusal to approve funding for a Leeds tram scheme backed by West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin. She argued that if every secretary of state agrees a project should go ahead, officials should not be able to override the decision.
“Centralisation isn’t dead; it is alive and well – holding our economy back and creating politics that hoards power,” she said.
“Everyone can dodge responsibility and hide behind process. But people elect governments to make decisions and improve their lives.
“The Government can and must clear the bureaucratic barriers to the Leeds tram and back Tracy to deliver it as quickly as possible.”
Rayner also proposed giving metro mayors the power to compulsorily sell or lease derelict buildings left to rot by absentee owners, citing Sheffield’s Old Town Hall and Manchester’s Theatre Royal as examples.
She said: “When buildings have been left to rack and ruin by distant investors, mayors should be given the power to put them up for compulsory sale or lease, so someone else can have a shot – whether that’s the council, a local business or a community group.
“Building on the work we’ve already done to strengthen the powers available to communities to take control of assets of community value – and the introduction of a Community Right to Buy – we can take greater steps to put power in people’s hands.”
The former housing secretary also called for a Regional Care Cooperative in every part of England by the end of the Parliament to reduce the role of private equity in children’s social care, alongside a cap on care providers’ profits, pointing to research from the New Economics Foundation which found that most of the UK’s largest private-equity-backed care home operators are ultimately owned through tax havens.