Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: Rayner fails to crush the impudent Tory pup

Angela Rayner was not amused. She was standing in for Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs, and Chris Philp, standing in for Kemi Badenoch, had invited her to agree that “standing up for rape victims is not Far Right”.

Philp is good at being disagreeable. It is his natural game. The Labour benches bristled. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, sitting beside Rayner, wore a look of thunder.

What right did this impudent Tory pup have to challenge them? He moved without effort to “the small boats crisis” and informed the House that it “is a crisis of public safety”.

Rayner set out to crush the wretched boy. She reminded MPs that he was “at the heart of the Home Office when immigration soared”, and she alleged that a million pounds a day was “spiffed up the wall” by the last Government.

The Speaker let “spiffed” pass. Like “spaffed”, it can just mean squandered. “Spiffing”, one may note, has positive connotations, but neither of them was in a mood to be positive. They wrestled like angry six-year-olds in a school playground.

Philip, his face lowered as he read from a script constructed to be as rude as possible, flung at Rayner the case of a Zimbabwean paedophile who avoided deportation by appealing to the Human Rights Act.

Philp urged that the Human Rights Act be scrapped for immigration matters, “so this sovereign Parliament decides the law our courts apply”.

Rayner resorted again to “14 years of failure” by the Conservatives. In this she was faithful to the tu quoque defence employed week after week by the Prime Minister.

But how long will the “you lot were worse” retort hold? Month by month it sounds more evasive, an inglorious denial that once you are in government the buck stops with you.

Philp today sounded just as inglorious as Rayner, but wouldn’t be crushed, and made some points the Government is afraid of making. To stop illegal Channel crossings, he contended, the deterrent of immediate deportation, as introduced with success by Australia a decade ago, is required.

Cooper looked not only very cross but very worried. The small boats present her with an astonishingly difficult problem, and in the year since coming to office she has been unable to stop it getting worse.