Labour's deputy Angela Rayner has been sacked from her roles as party chair and campaign coordinator following poor results in the English local elections.
The party lost control of several councils and suffered defeat to the Tories in the Hartlepool by-election.
Leader Sir Keir Starmer is expected to reshuffle his frontbench team in the next few days.
Ms Rayner will remain deputy leader of the party as it is a position directly elected by the party members.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57037839She was blamed for her role in running the council and mayoral polls and the byelection in Hartlepool, but her allies said she was never given control over campaigns that were “run out of Starmer’s office”. As the chair of the campaign, her supporters said she was being set up for the blame.
One frontbencher said that blaming Rayner for the election results was “utterly ridiculous”, after Starmer had explicitly accepted personal responsibility in a statement on Friday.
Party insiders said they believed MP Steve Reed would take over as chair. Reed is close to Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, and Labour’s general secretary, David Evans.
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Meanwhile, senior Labour figures blamed the election fiasco on a failure to understand how Boris Johnson has changed the Tory party so it can appeal to working-class voters, as questions mounted over Starmer’s leadership.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/08/angela-rayner-fired-labour-keir-starmer-local-elections-polls
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