Angela Rayner has admitted she tried “really hard” to install Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister in both 2017 and 2019, in a confession the Tories will be delighted with.

Ms Rayner’s pro-Corbyn history resurfaced after Keir Starmer told viewers at a BBC Question Time debate last night that Jeremy Corbyn would have made a “better prime minister” than Boris Johnson.

Sir Keir was pushed on his previous support for the hated hard-left former Labour leader, after he said in 2019 Mr Corbyn would make a “great prime minister”.

Asked by the Question Time audience in York why he praised Mr Corbyn, Sir Keir said he “would be a better prime minister [than] what we got – Boris Johnson, a man who made massive promises and didn’t keep them”.

This morning his deputy Angela Rayner was asked on Good Morning Britain “why does all this make Sir Keir Starmer so uncomfortable?”

Ms Rayner said both her and Sir Keir “were fighting for a Labour government and I think we all saw what happened after 2019 with Boris Johnson as Prime Minister”.

The Labour deputy even said she feels “guilty” about Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to win the 2019 election due to his detested fantasy policies.

She claimed that Sir Keir is uncomfortable about his previous beliefs towards Mr Corbyn because “we’ve changed the Labour Party since then because we need a Labour Party that’s going to serve the British people”.

Asked on BBC Breakfast about the same trust row, Ms Rayner admitted that both her and Sir Keir “wanted to put forward a robust case and push forward for a Labour Government.

“We tried to do that but it is also very clear we got hammered in 2019. The British public rejected Labour and felt we didn’t put a case forward for the country.

“None of us wanted to lose in 2017 and 2019 – I was pushing really hard for a Labour government.”

Last night Sir Keir told BBC Question Time that he only said Jeremy Corbyn would make a “great prime minister” because he “didn’t think we’d win” the election.

However the audience didn’t buy this, and pressed him over and over again on the issue.

He was even laughed at as he tried waffling his way out of giving a straight answer.

The audience member who had asked the question about Mr Corbyn said his obfuscation “leaves me with the same question I had about integrity and trust that I had with the clown Boris Johnson”.

Fellow shadow cabinet minister Peter Kyle was asked five times whether he agreed with Sir Keir that Jeremy Corbyn would have made a better prime minister than Boris Johnson.

Mr Kyle refused to answer the question each time.