Almost everyone across the political spectrum agrees: in terms of her Commons performances, Kemi Badenoch just cannot do the job of opposition leader. With scattergun, hurried questions she let Angela Rayner off the hook on the most dangerous day the deputy Prime Minister has faced since Labour took power last summer.
At the beginning of PMQs, Keir Starmer was patting Rayner reassuringly on the shoulder. Ten minutes later, he was so relaxed he was making jokes about the Tory leader’s claims of an alleged offer from Stanford University when she was 16 years-old and the “hole” she recently told the Sunday Times had inherited. For Badenoch, this was a disaster.
But was it a triumph for Angela Rayner? She has reported herself to the independent commissioner for ministerial standards and apologised for taking bad legal advice over which home was her main residence – a mistake which resulted in her failing to pay the due amount of stamp duty she owed.
She gets a lot of sympathy, across the political divide, because of her gutsy overcoming of early hard times which would have finished off most people, and because she brings colour and vim to a political world which in the 2020s rather lacks both. Above all, she has been remarkably open and frank about the background to this story, even applying to be released from a court order undertaking preventing the disclosure of information about her personal life.
The story involves a divorce, a disabled son and an attempt to protect her family. As she says herself: “The arrangements I have set out reflect the reality that family life is rarely straightforward, particularly when dealing with disability, divorce, and the complexities of ensuring your children’s long-term security.”
My strong impression is that the Prime Minister fiercely wants to keep her – and she was after all independently elected as deputy party leader, although “Deputy Prime Minister” is Starmer’s gift to take away. Across the political divide, many of her natural foes are reluctant to cast the first stone.
So, although when the news of her failure to pay taxes was first released most commentators believed she could not survive it, it’s possible she will – continuing, therefore, to wrestle with the hugely ambitious promise of building 1.5 million new homes over the lifetime of this Parliament, something that is beginning to look impossible.
But if she does survive, there will be a real price for Labour to pay, because Rayner has been the finger-jabbing prosecutor against Tory sleaze for so long, and with such derisive, memorable vehemence. Many voters will conclude that, yes, indeed, “they are all the same,” recoiling with a snort of disgust at the hypocrisy. This has been an awful day for British politics in general.
[See also: Angela Rayner’s forward march]
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