Among those nearest to Angela Rayner there is genuine anger, even though they admit she made a mistake that cost her badly.
A source close to the now former deputy prime minister, who resigned amid a scandal over her tax affairs, told The Independent: “Keir [Starmer], Morgan [McSweeney] and the whole cabal will regret what they did to her.
“They won a battle today, but this is going to hurt them. They are actually an existential problem for the Labour Party.”
While the prime minister had outwardly supported Rayner when she admitted she had failed to pay £40,000 in stamp duty on a flat in Brighton, there was a feeling that he was just waiting for the ethics adviser “to give him an excuse” to wield the knife.
“There has been a ‘get Angela’ campaign running for weeks now,” said one ally of the former deputy leader. “And now they have got her.”
The extent of the reshuffle that followed appeared to confirm that her departure had been planned as part of a much bigger reshape of a failing government that would no longer incorporate a senior figure from the left.
Rayner accepted her fate on Thursday night after ethics adviser Laurie Magnus’s report was sent to her and “support from the prime minister had gone”.
“The stupid thing is that she would probably have got that £40k back in a few months legally,” a supporter despondently noted.
The theory is that Rayner had a target on her back because plotters on the left wanted her to take over from Starmer.
But ironically, while speculation had been rife about Rayner being the leadership candidate in a left-wing take over of the Labour Party, her heart was never completely in it.
Rayner was always a reluctant candidate for Downing Street. A friend of the former deputy leader told The Independent that for some months she had been considering whether to stand down from frontline politics altogether.
“She wants to be able to go on holiday and not have people taking her picture. She wants to be able to nip down to B&Q without being recognised.”
The intrusion into her personal life over the tax affairs fiasco surrounding her £800,000 Hove flat had, according to her friends, just “underlined everything she hates about being in the public eye”.
Among her supporters in the trade unions and the soft left of the Labour Party, who were genuinely plotting Sir Keir Starmer’s downfall with her as their preferred replacement, there had been hope she might have held onto her job.
But by Friday morning with an early sight of the report she felt she had to go. Support from Sir Keir, which had been very vocal at PMQs on Wednesday, had quietly disappeared.
“She had no choice,” said another friend.
And it meant that she had to resign from everything, not just her housing secretary role, but also deputy prime minister and deputy leader of the Labour party.
“It was untenable for her to continue in any role,” an ally said. “She can at least now go and lick her wounds and come back from the back benchers.”
They added: “She made a mistake but in the end it was tax avoidance and it did not meet the ethical level required of government.”
Fellow ministers had lost patience and were saying she should go.
One MP suggested “she is going to be a pain in the proverbial for Keir.”
While Sir Keir did a three page handwritten note in a sign of how much he appreciated her, there was a “bad feeling” at the end.
She had also been increasingly frustrated at her treatment in government.
A promise to give her an official Office of the Deputy Prime Minister never materialised despite months of negotiations and a memorandum of understanding promising it.
Starmer and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney were happy for her to have the title “but did not want a rival court.”
But those close to Ms Rayner felt she never got the thanks and support she had given Starmer and McSweeney.
In particular she used her political capital with Labour MPs on the left of the party to prevent a catastrophic defeat in the welfare rebellion ahead of the summer recess.
“Keir is only PM because of what Angela did for him,” said one source close to her. “He never appreciated her.”
Now Sir Keir is set to find out what life is like without a big figure to rally the left of the party.
Ms Rayner has more time to “reflect on her mistakes.”
