A WEEK beside the seaside in Brighton. The chance to get together again for the first time in an age, renew old acquaintances and make new ones. Sounds lovely on paper.

Yet less than 24 hours from the start of Labour's conference in Brighton and Sir Keir Starmer was beginning to look like a leader who, in the peerless words of Withnail, had gone on holiday by mistake.

First came the watering down of his plans to reform the way the party elects its leader. Embarrassing, but then it emerged that the party's deputy leader, Angela Rayner, had called Boris Johnson and his Cabinet “a bunch of scum – homophobic, racist, misogynistic”.

All of this against a background of whispers that Brighton would be Sir Keir’s “do or die” conference, his last chance to show he could cut through to the public and deserved to lead the party into the next General Election.

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After a weekend of queuing on forecourts and a U-turn on visas for foreign workers, the UK Government could have expected a hard time on the Sunday politics shows.

In the event, the Minister on duty, Grant Shapps, Secretary of State for Transport, had a relatively smooth ride.

Asked about the Rayner remarks on Sky News’ Trevor Phillips on Sunday, Mr Shapps said there was no place in public life for that kind of incivility.

Ms Rayner had been the first guest on Phillips’ show, so if she was going to apologise then and there would have been the place to do it.

But the Ashton-under-Lyne MP refused to do so, saying she would only apologise if Boris Johnson said sorry for past comments he made “that are homophobic, that are racist, that are misogynistic”.

Her remarks were inevitably brought up when Sir Keir appeared on The Andrew Marr Show.

“Angela and I take different approaches and that’s not language that I would use,” said Sir Keir.

Asked if she should apologise, he said: “That’s a matter for Angela… but I would not have used those words. I will talk to Angela about it later on.”

Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy told Times Radio it was “completely up to” Ms Rayner whether she apologised over the remarks, but it was not the kind of language she would use.

“I’m not very interested in insulting the Tories. I just want to get rid of them,” said Ms Nandy.

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There was support, however, from John McDonnell, former Shadow Chancellor and Jeremy Corbyn’s wartime consigliere. “We’ve all been there, late at night, getting very angry about what’s going on. What I like about Angie Rayner is that she’s human,” he told Phillips.

It was a busy weekend, publicity-wise, for Ms Rayner, and one that illustrated her ability to be both an asset and a liability to Labour.

On Saturday the Times ran an interview with the deputy Labour leader which set out in moving detail the many difficulties she has overcome in life. Whether it was her poverty-stricken childhood, caring for a mother who had mental health problems, becoming pregnant at 15, or leaving school with no qualifications, Ms Rayner came across as a strong woman, forged in the fires of experience. The kind of “real” person voters say they want in a politician.

There was no mention of Conservatives as “scum” or any other derogatory remarks. It was a positive, some might say glowing, profile. A day on, however, and she was making the news again for very different reasons.

How much harm has she done to her own prospects and those of the party?

Though she would hardly say so, Ms Rayner has a lot in common with Boris Johnson. Both have a reputation for saying things others would not dare, and both come with controversy “priced in”. That’s just Boris, say his allies, much in the same manner as Ms Rayner’s supporters will say, “That’s just Angela.”

She believes, as the Prime Minister does, that such straight-talking goes over well in the kind of English constituencies both parties need to win if they are to be the next government.

Ms Rayner is an asset to her leader in other ways. As the closest the left has to an “heir to Corbyn” she balances Sir Keir’s centrist tendencies.

Today, however, her presence as deputy leader is seen as just another sign of Sir Keir’s weakness. He wanted to demote her, she refused to budge. Now she is a serious contender for his job if – or, as some believe, when – a contest takes place.

Can leader and deputy work it out? Marr gave a plug yesterday to a new documentary, Blair and Brown: The New Labour Revolution. Starting on October 4, it details how the party became an election winning machine, only for a clash of personalities at the top to bring about its defeat.

Instrumental in the early success of New Labour, as far as the party was concerned, was the presence of John Prescott as deputy leader, playing the “heart” to Blair’s “head”, the working class MP who would keep the party’s middle class lawyer tendency in check. Remind you of anyone?

Ms Rayner, however, is no John Prescott, defender of her leader come what may. She has backed down before, apologising to a Conservative MP for calling him “scum” (that word again), but this is a politician who is not afraid of a scrap.

Not the best lead up to Sir Keir’s leadership speech on Wednesday. Still, he did want to be beside the seaside.