Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: Stride exposes Labour divisions

How glum the Labour benches looked. Angela Rayner, standing in for the Prime Minister for the second week running, could do nothing to raise their spirits.

Mel Stride, standing in for Kemi Badenoch, invited Rayner to explain why she is right about the Government’s proposed welfare cuts, “and 122 of her colleagues are wrong”.

Rayner had no answer. Nor could she rebut Stride’s claim that she herself agrees with the 122 rebels, who would like her to replace Sir Keir Starmer as Labour leader.

When Stride asked whether there will be a vote on Tuesday on the proposed cuts, she insisted: “We will go ahead on Tuesday.”

Tuesday is still six days away, so perhaps she felt this was a safe assurance to make, safer at least than the announcement of a headlong retreat.

We have long been impressed by Badenoch’s unfashionable willingness to express approval of, and offer equal opportunities to, tubby middle-aged white men.

Here was an opportunity for Stride to show what he could do, and he seized it. “We have a great deal in common,” he told Rayner. “We both disagree viscerally with the Chancellor’s tax policies.”

Rachel Reeves pretended to find this amusing. She was less amused when Stride invited Rayner to repeat the Chancellor’s promise, given at the last Budget, not to raise taxes.

“This is a bit rich,” Rayner replied, and launched into a routine denunciation of the wicked Tories, whom she blamed, as Starmer does, for every mistake made by the present Government.

That was a bit rich of Rayner, and worked no better than when the Prime Minister does it.

“Tax rises are coming,” Stride concluded.

He referred to reports that huge increases in council tax are on the way, and asked: “Why doesn’t she think that council tax is paid by working people?”

For Labour had promised not to raise taxes on working people, a slippery term which is supposed to imply the existence of unworking people with vast unearned fortunes on which it would be perfectly fair to impose punitive taxes.

Stride wondered whether Rayner found it “a little embarrassing to be defending policies she doesn’t even believe in herself”.

She responded with another tired swipe at the Tories, not good enough to raise Labour spirits. They are in a jam, and they know it.