Keir Starmer has said he believes Angela Rayner will come back to the cabinet, three months after she quit over a tax scandal.

The prime minister offered a robust endorsement of his former deputy when speaking to The Observer and said she was “the best social mobility story this country has ever seen”.

Rayner cared for her bipolar mother while growing up, then left school when she fell pregnant at 16.

She rose through the ranks of the Labour Party as a darling of the soft-left, and worked as the deputy Labour leader, deputy prime minister and housing secretary until September.

Rayner was forced to resign after it emerged she had paid around £40,000 less than she should have done on stamp duty when buying a second property earlier this year.

She has remained a backbencher as the

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