Reality Check verdict: the wrong prescription

Yesterday, Angela Rayner called for a path to be cleared for Andy Burnham to be allowed to return to Westminster to save the Labour party and, presumably, the country. But she also set out her manifesto for fixing Britain’s economy and made a number of claims about the state of the country and what might be done to improve it. Reality Check took a look at some of her boldest claims: 

CLAIM: ‘We must be the party of working people’

Rayner was ‘instrumental’ in the government abandoning plans to cut £5 billion from the planned increase in disability benefit spending by 2030. That means, on current projections, the working-age caseload for the main disability benefit, PIP, will rise from 2.7 million in 2023/24 to 4.4 million 2030/31. Only ‘around one-sixth of recipients are in work’, according to the OBR. Claimants of incapacity benefit – for those who cannot work – will rise from 3.3 million to 4.1 million and its cost will rise to £32 billion.

CLAIM: ‘Voters have turned to populists and nationalists because of the cost of living’

This is an often-repeated claim which does not necessarily bear........

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