Another week with Angela Rayner in the spotlight at PMQs – and another minefield of intense government awkwardness for the Deputy Prime Minister to navigate. Last week, Keir Starmer was in Canada for the G7 and it was Labour’s U-turn over a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal that was the headline topic, hence shadow home secretary Chris Philp filling in for Kemi Badenoch. This week, with Starmer in The Hague for a Nato summit, the shadow chancellor Mel Stride took the starring role, focusing on the issue threatening to annihilate the government’s supposedly unassailable majority: welfare reform.
As Megan Kenyon wrote this morning, the rebellion over disability benefit cuts has snowballed, with nearly a third of Labour MPs publicly backing an amendment that would wreck the bill – to say nothing of those who harbour doubts in private. The scale of the revolt has taken the government by surprise, and rebels have been met by a frantic campaign of threats and pleading, with the suggestion (denied by No 10) that this amounts to a confidence vote in the Prime Minister. There has been speculation the government will have no choice to but to pull the vote on 1 July – something Rayner explicitly denied in the session today.
All of this puts the Conservatives in an unusually powerful position. The opposition party is ideologically supportive of the government’s welfare reforms: its criticism is that it doesn’t go far enough. Last night, Badenoch dangled the prospect of Tory votes to help get the legislation through, albeit with some strings attached that the government would never accept (namely, ruling out any further tax rises – more on that in a moment). One can imagine the furious head-to-head Badenoch would have had with Starmer, accusing him of being too weak a leader to get his own reforms through.
Stride took a different approach, making full use of the fact it was Rayner, not Starmer, before him. The Deputy Prime Minister comes from the soft-left wing of the party and has become something of a symbol (intentionally or not) of an alternative path this Labour government could take. Her leaked memo to Rachel Reeves in May regarding potential tax rises on the wealthy has only cemented this impression. Today, Rayner – who usually has no problem bringing the thunder – was standing at the despatch box defending a policy many suspect she has serious doubts about, as do her colleagues on the backbenches. Stride took full advantage of that.
“It is a pleasure to stand opposite the Right Honourable Lady,” Stride began. “Despite what many may think, we have a great deal in common, not least that we both viscerally disagree with the Chancellor’s tax policies.” He continued that, with regards to her taking the questions instead of Starmer, “I know there are many sitting behind her who wish this was a permanent arrangement.” Why, he wanted to know, did Rayner think the Labour rebels who oppose the welfare cuts were wrong?
Rayner did an OK job hitting all the government’s talking points and blaming the Conservatives for their record on supporting people into work – and, indeed, on tax rises. She returned to one of her favourite refrains: “I take no lectures.” But those who have watched her past performances could tell her heart wasn’t in it. The same applied to the benches behind her. Whereas the Prime Minister can usually enjoy a chorus of supportive roars and cheers during PMQs, Labour backbenchers were uncharacteristically silent. Rayner was on her own.
Stride continued with his needling, but declining to resort to the shouting and finger-pointing that has become Badenoch’s style. It didn’t matter that the Tory position on the cuts is muddled. (If Conservative MPs truly believed in cutting the welfare bill, one could argue they had a moral duty to vote with the government – not that you’ll hear anyone from Team Starmer making that case.) His strategy was to highlight Labour disunity, and in his own calm, dignified way, it was highly effective.
The shadow chancellor set two traps for Rayner: one on the timing of the vote, and one on the potential of further tax rises in the autumn. She skirted around ruling out the latter, causing Stride to pounce. “Tax rises are coming,” he warned the House. Rachel Reeves, sitting to Rayner’s left, kept her expression wooden. But Rayner insisted the government won’t be pulling its bill next week, despite its diminishing chance of passing. Can this line hold? There were some confused expressions on the faces of Labour MPs. “The people behind her are not convinced,” Stride pointed out. They didn’t seem it.
Rayner seemed to relax once the session moved on to other topics. There was a lovely exchange with Oliver Dowden, who used to face Rayner at deputy PMQs when he was Rishi Sunak’s second in command. And she regained her typical fire by batting away the obnoxious question from Tory Andrew Snowden on which cabinet colleagues she’d axe first in a reshuffle. “Mr Speaker, maybe he wants a go next week,” Rayner teased, referring to Badenoch’s tactic of giving her front bench the chance to audition by rotating who fills in for her. “The leader of the opposition said she was going to get better week-on-week – she already has in the last two weeks by not turning up,” she continued, before wondering aloud when Robert Jenrick would be given a turn. Finally, some supportive laughter from the Labour benches, and even a few smiles.
The session ended, however, on a sombre note. Jeremy Corbyn – once Labour leader, now an independent – stood up to challenge the government on its position on Gaza, asking why the government was continuing to supply equipment to Israel and whether the government would back his ten-minute-rule bill on an inquiry into the UK’s involvement with Israeli military action. There was absolute silence in the chamber while he spoke. You could hear not a shuffle. Rayner handled the question well, but there was no mistaking the atmosphere. Maybe MPs have read George Eaton’s excellent report into the threat the government faces from the left, in which he writes that “polling by More in Common, shared exclusively with the New Statesman, shows a ‘new Corbyn-led party’ would win 10 per cent of the vote, reducing Labour’s share from 23 per cent to 20 per cent.” Welfare reform may be the biggest challenge Starmer’s government faces this week. But it is far from the only one.
[See also: Keir Starmer faces war on all fronts]
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