When dullards are jilted by lovers, friends say ‘you were always too good for them’. Perhaps this inspired Lucy Powell’s latest corker. She told the Commons that Angela Rayner was only being criticised because ‘she’s so bloody good at her job’.
This claim was met – not just on the Opposition benches – with slapping of thighs and merriment. Good old Plonker Powell! Always good for a laugh. Ms Powell lifted her snout from her notes, cast about with a slightly wounded expression and inhaled defiantly, valiant Quixote atop her knackered mule.
It was the morning after the tricky day before. Mrs Rayner’s tax avoidance was still the only talk in town. Hypocrisy! Greed! Wrigglings! As is the way in political scandals, a Cabinet colleague had to be ‘sent out’ to defend the stricken minister on the morning round of broadcast interviews: Radio 4’s snooty Today programme, LBC’s clever Nick Ferrari, David Frost’s boy on Sky News and ITV’s touchy-feely breakfast show with man-of-the-people Ed Balls.
The luckless soul selected was Bridget Phillipson, education secretary. Scary Bridget is the human embodiment of carbolic acid. A voice as soothing as Bernard Herrmann’s strings soundtrack for Psycho (1960). Yet there she was, beamed in from a primary school classroom in Tyldesley, Lancs, oozing her unique brand of sympathy.
‘I’m not going to prejudge it,’ she intoned. ‘I can’t speculate. I have responsibilities in terms of how I conduct myself.’ Scary Bridget is no more equipped to plead for mercy than Princess Anne is to whistle ‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’.
Ms Phillipson was asked, repeatedly, about the Prime Minister’s involvement. What had Sir Keir Starmer known, and when?
Dashboard klaxons honking, the education secretary did some two-wheel cornering and asserted that ‘for the Prime Minister, adherence to high standards really matters’. With which she tried to switch to talking about ‘behaviour policies’ in schools. Didn’t we once call them ‘school rules’?
It was the morning after the tricky day before. Mrs Rayner’s tax avoidance was still the only talk in town. Hypocrisy! Greed! Wrigglings!
Scary Bridget is no more equipped to plead for mercy than Princess Anne is to whistle ‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’
The great stickler for probity himself – one talks of Sir Keir – was at a shipyard in Scotland. Quick, give that man a frogman’s outfit and chuck him in the water where the journalists can’t ask him any questions! For there was, as the hours passed, a sense that this pongy affair was starting to lap at his hull.
By mid-morning, Downing Street decided that another minister might make a slightly better fist of things than Scary Bridget. The Cabinet Office’s Pat McFadden was despatched to appear on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show.
‘This is complicated,’ said Mr McFadden. Being Scottish, and therefore less gripped by English class niceties, Mr McFadden did not reprise the line of defence offered on Wednesday night by the science secretary, Peter Kyle, who told LBC listeners that Mrs Rayner was being got at on account of her ‘accent and background’.
A clip was also circulating of Rachel Reeves trying to do her bit for Mrs Rayner. She wasn’t terribly good at it. Amid much stuttering she said she had ‘full confidence’ in Mrs Rayner. Oh dear.
Back in the Commons, the Conservatives’ frontbencher, Jesse Norman, was more effective than his party leader had been at PMQs on Wednesday.
After noting that the coming Budget was likely to whack us with higher taxes, Mr Norman said ‘it seems the only person who will not be paying more tax is the deputy prime minister. She at least has a policy of trying to reduce taxes.’ Laughter.
Mr Norman, who has a deadly courtesy to him, observed that the Solicitor General (herself a metallic creature) had just taken a strict line in the House about potential tax fraud.
‘We now have a situation,’ said Mr Norman with deceptive lightness, ‘in which the deputy Prime Minister has tried to dodge paying £40,000 in tax on her third home after demanding that previous ministers should resign over tax scandals. Every Labour Member at the general election made a solemn manifesto commitment to maintain “the highest standards” in office.’
No further questions, m’lud.
Bridget PhillipsonAngela Rayner
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QUENTIN LETTS: With a voice as soothing as the Psycho soundtrack Bridget Phillipson was dispatched to defend Mrs Rayner