Rayner’s Renaissance Assassin Skills Push Chancellor To Brink of Tears – Guido Fawkes

For all her Pigeon-Fancying, Elsie Tannering, Union Bannering Cor Blimeyness, Angela Rayner has the aristocratic lethality of a Renaissance assassin.

On the front bench before PMQs, she led Rachel Reeves in a girls-together chatty-patty duet, smiling and doing friendly solidarity so brutally that the first female Chancellor was on the brink of tears. There was only an outside chance she would actually break up sobbing, but at one point her chin crumpled, both edges of her mouth turned down and hope flared in the nasty hearts of her many, many critics.

Tory Mel Stride, deputising for his leader, craftily took the deputy prime minister’s side: “Despite what many think, we have a great deal in common. Both of us viscerally disagree with the Chancellor’s tax policies.”

As a side note, Angela is said to have been promoting the merits of the troubled Welfare Bill among her backbenches. Both Rachel and Keir have been relying on her to bring in the left of the PLP.

But all successful politicians have the Granita skills of saying one thing and leaving their audience with the opposite impression. Rachel’s face suggested she knew exactly how Angela had been operating. When backbenchers would have said, “I didn’t get into politics to take money from the disabled to bomb Muslims,” she would have her ways of disagreeing that showed how much she agreed.

The successful assassin mourns the death of her friend, her colleague, the one she tried most valiantly to save while opening him up, right to the chops.

“Will the vote on Tuesday actually go ahead,” Stride asked. It was an actual question, and productive.

“We will go ahead on Tuesday,” Angela Rayner said with a flourish.

That too was unexpected. The lobby, and indeed Mel Stride, has been expecting it to be pulled, as was the case with the Winter Fuel payments. Mel had got a firm, governmental commitment at the despatch box that it would proceed full ahead towards the iceberg.

Please note that, in the event of disaster, Angela herself would have been loyal to a fault. She was stating Government policy forcefully.

“Let me be absolutely clear,” Mel said. “We will help get their Bill through, if they can commit to actually reducing the Welfare bill”.

Ideally, he wouldn’t have asked for any conditions. The presence of Conservatives in a Labour voting lobby creates an allergic reaction in that party. The mere prospect for Labour loyalists to be joined in principle and practice with “Tory scum” creates the conditions for a split.

Angela let off a “party opposite” blast, accusing them of failing where they themselves are about to fail and she sat down allowing herself a private, pussycat smile. It was then that the Chancellor’s mouth turned down and for a moment, an epochal parliamentary moment hung in the balance.

She mastered herself. The first female Chancellor narrowly but decisively defeated the misogynists.

Keir Starmer dodged last week’s U-turn on the rape gangs inquiry and dodged this week’s embarrassment of his 120 rebels and their wrecking amendment (including a dozen select committee chairs!). Remember, Mrs Thatcher abandoned the field to plotters by attending a security conference in Europe during a delicate moment in her premiership.

How much danger is he in? What can he do? How can he square this circle?

On his track record, the PM will sign the amendment himself, and possibly vote against it. Against what – the Amendment or the Bill? Both. Trump’s strategic ambiguity has been rubbing off on our duffer.

On which subject – a Liberal Democrat suggested that the UK should urgently “convene” talks with the White House in advance of the State visit Trump is pressing for in September. The idea was to “leverage” the visit to secure various guarantees.

It’s likely that the visit has been leveraged to its full extent already. It may be the reason why Trump has been so nice to Keir: it is Keir’s say-so, not the King’s, that authorises the visit, the carriages, the banquets, the Band of the Brigade of Guards playing Hail to the Chief. Once the visit is over we’ll see what Trump really thinks of our PM (placing him, probably, between Neville Chamberlain and Anthony Eden).

But, old saying, if you think things can’t get any worse it’s just a failure of the imagination.

If we think our PM is the bottom of the barrel Angela Rayner is another barrel altogether.

“He demands a programme to help people into work, exactly what this bill does after he left one in eight young people out of the economy. He demands no new taxes from the party that raised taxes to wreck our levels and he demands further welfare savings Mr Speaker from the man who was in charge as the Welfare bill absolutely ballooned.”

As a deputy, she is a delight. As a premier she is everything Nigel Farage could hope for.

In the meantime – on with the “calm, patient work of a government of service”.