Welcome to the Politics Unpacked podcast. I'm Ed Vasey. Today's episode breaks from the norm and for a good

reason because we're bringing you the full fallout and fast-moving real-time reaction to the major

political shake-up of the day. Angela Rainer resigning as deputy

prime minister, deputy leader of the Labour Party and housing secretary. Strap in, there's a lot to

unpack. Times Political Editor Steve Swinford joins me now. Good afternoon. I think you actually

predicted this was going to happen. I think you predicted this yesterday, but you certainly broke the news after 11 o'clock that this was going

to happen. It has happened now. We now have Laurie Magnus's letter. We have Angela Rainer's

letter of resignation and we have the Prime Minister's response to it. This is huge news and will cause massive disruption to the government.

It is huge news. I mean, we are now expecting a quite significant cabinet reshuffle this afternoon.

It feels like that Starma could use Rainer's departure as an opportunity to possibly sack

quite a few members or move sideways or whatever it ends up being of his top team as well as a kind of reshuffle of the ministerial ranks.

So I suspect Stama will try to use this to kind of do the reshuffle he may have wanted to do all along.

But look, it is deeply, obviously Andrew Rainer is going to be devastated by this.

And it sounds like Keir Starma is genuinely devastated as well.

There is an extraordinary three-page handwritten letter from Starmat.

It's very rarely you see the Prime Minister's handwriting,

in which he expresses repeatedly how sad he is that she's gone

and hails her achievements in government.

It's a very, very personal letter.

And it accords with what we've been hearing privately that here Stama really did not want to do this.

He really did not want to sack. Angela Raina, it creates a huge problem for him. But in the end,

Norie Magnus's advice was so clear and so clear cut that he had no choice. And Lorraine had to go.

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