{"id":114533,"date":"2025-09-04T17:55:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T17:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/114533\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T17:55:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T17:55:09","slug":"quentin-letts-with-a-voice-as-soothing-as-the-psycho-soundtrack-bridget-phillipson-was-dispatched-to-defend-mrs-rayner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/114533\/","title":{"rendered":"QUENTIN LETTS: With a voice as soothing as the Psycho soundtrack Bridget Phillipson was dispatched to defend Mrs Rayner"},"content":{"rendered":"

By QUENTIN LETTS, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER<\/a> <\/p>\n

Published: 10:30 EDT, 4 September 2025 | Updated: 12:02 EDT, 4 September 2025 <\/p>\n

When dullards are jilted by lovers, friends say \u2018you were always too good for them\u2019. Perhaps this inspired Lucy Powell\u2019s latest corker. She told the Commons that Angela Rayner<\/a> was only being criticised because \u2018she\u2019s so bloody good at her job\u2019.<\/p>\n

This claim was met \u2013 not just on the Opposition benches \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

It was the morning after the tricky day before. Mrs Rayner\u2019s 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 \u2018sent out\u2019 to defend the stricken minister on the morning round of broadcast interviews: Radio 4\u2019s snooty Today programme, LBC\u2019s clever Nick Ferrari, David Frost\u2019s boy on Sky News<\/a> and ITV<\/a>\u2019s touchy-feely breakfast show with man-of-the-people Ed Balls.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m not going to prejudge it,\u2019 she intoned. \u2018I can\u2019t speculate. I have responsibilities in terms of how I conduct myself.\u2019 Scary Bridget is no more equipped to plead for mercy than Princess Anne<\/a> is to whistle \u2018My Old Man\u2019s A Dustman\u2019.<\/p>\n

Ms Phillipson was asked, repeatedly, about the Prime Minister\u2019s involvement. What had Sir Keir Starmer<\/a> known, and when?<\/p>\n

Dashboard klaxons honking, the education secretary did some two-wheel cornering and asserted that \u2018for the Prime Minister, adherence to high standards really matters\u2019. With which she tried to switch to talking about \u2018behaviour policies\u2019 in schools. Didn\u2019t we once call them \u2018school rules\u2019?<\/p>\n

\"It <\/p>\n

It was the morning after the tricky day before. Mrs Rayner\u2019s tax avoidance was still the only talk in town. Hypocrisy! Greed! Wrigglings!<\/p>\n

\"Scary <\/p>\n

Scary Bridget is no more equipped to plead for mercy than Princess Anne is to whistle \u2018My Old Man\u2019s A Dustman\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

The great stickler for probity himself \u2013 one talks of Sir Keir \u2013 was at a shipyard in Scotland. Quick, give that man a frogman\u2019s outfit and chuck him in the water where the journalists can\u2019t ask him any questions! For there was, as the hours passed, a sense that this pongy affair was starting to lap at his hull.<\/p>\n

By mid-morning, Downing Street decided that another minister might make a slightly better fist of things than Scary Bridget. The Cabinet Office\u2019s Pat McFadden was despatched to appear on Radio 2\u2019s Jeremy Vine Show.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is complicated,\u2019 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 \u2018accent and background\u2019.<\/p>\n

A clip was also circulating of Rachel Reeves trying to do her bit for Mrs Rayner. She wasn\u2019t terribly good at it. Amid much stuttering she said she had \u2018full confidence\u2019 in Mrs Rayner. Oh dear.<\/p>\n

Back in the Commons, the Conservatives\u2019 frontbencher, Jesse Norman, was more effective than his party leader had been at PMQs on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

After noting that the coming Budget was likely to whack us with higher taxes, Mr Norman said \u2018it 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.\u2019 Laughter.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u2018We now have a situation,\u2019 said Mr Norman with deceptive lightness, \u2018in which the deputy Prime Minister has tried to dodge paying \u00a340,000 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 \u201cthe highest standards\u201d in office.\u2019<\/p>\n

No further questions, m\u2019lud.<\/p>\n

Bridget Phillipson<\/a>Angela Rayner<\/a><\/p>\n

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