Rayner's PMQs performance will trouble Starmer

Spectator

5 hours ago

As you might have noticed from the crowds weeping in the streets and the appearance of sackcloth, ashes and rent, er, garments: Sir Keir Starmer wasn't at Prime Minister's Questions this afternoon. Instead we got Big Ange – who absolutely, definitely, doesn't want the job for herself. She'd come dressed in a fetching double-breasted blazer and cream trouser combo which made her look like a judge at Henley or an old-school pub landlord. Or even, perhaps deliberately, Nigel Farage.
Ange breezily mentioned Starmer's absence in the way you might mention you'd trod on a slug while gardening
Ange breezily mentioned Starmer's absence in the way you might mention you'd trod on a slug while gardening. As part of the Leader of the Opposition's weird 'deputy roulette' policy whereby she never quite commits to having one person filling in for her, the Tories had selected shadow home secretary Chris Philp to ask the questions this week. He did so with the air of a nervous schoolboy requesting an extension on his homework from a particularly sadistic schoolmaster.
Ange said she liked his tone – and initially at least, there was something of her previous camp frisson with Oliver 'Olive' Dowden. She eyed up Philp as a Montmartre madam might have looked upon a virginal subaltern. Was this shaping up to be a bit of a love-in? Not so. Things quickly grew spicier.
Soon, Ange was backed into a corner of having to defend the Prime Minister. Well sort of: tellingly she didn't quite justify or seek to defend his 'far-right bandwagon' remarks about the grooming gangs. Immigration, naturally, was what really set things on fire. The Tories had 'spivved their opportunity up the wall', said the Deputy Prime Minister, using what I think was a word entirely of her own devising.
The pair traded further broadsides. 'He was at the heart of the Home Office when we lost control of our borders,' boomed Ange. 'Goodness me she's got a cheek!' bellowed Mr Philp as Ange protested that the number of migrant hotels were dropping. That's one way of putting it.
Behind Ange were a pair of carefully positioned junior flunkies. They spent the whole of the performance rifling through folders and handing pieces of paper to – of all people – Lucy Powell. It brought to mind Operation Mincemeat, when the intelligence services placed important looking documents onto the body of someone who had accidentally eaten rat poison.
Anyway, the shuffling continued at a gentle pace until Mr Philp brought up the data on migrant hotels. This sent the general paper-based kerfuffle into overdrive. It was like watching a pair of chimps who had somehow found work as croupiers trying to shuffle a deck of cards.
'Dignity-vacuum of the week' went to Olivia Bailey – the MP for Reading West – who asked the now standard oily suck-up question from the Labour backbenches. Presumably they do this to try and get a place on the safe seat life-raft when the inevitable electoral Gotterdammerung happens. Would the Deputy PM 'confirm that THIS government will finally give my constituents the security they deserve?' gushed Bailey (it would be funny, if just once, the minister would take a stand against nauseating toadiness by replying 'no').
Philp ended with a question about the choice to keep a Zimbabwean paedophile in the country. Ange responded with an old Starmbot favourite: '14 years'. Different hair-style, different mannerisms, but the same reheated tripe.
And yet she did far, far better today than Sir Keir normally does. There was a charm and easiness of manner. Her delivery was less scratchy too; Starmer has the perpetual air of an about-to-be punched traffic warden telling an irate motorist to calm down, whereas Ange was more mob-adjacent landlady overseeing a lock-in. I suspect some Labour MPs will be quietly hoping that Starmer stays in Canada for another week.