23 OCTOBER 2024 | OPINION
Angela Rayner fielded the questions today. Facing her for the Opposition was Sir Oliver Dowden, on his last PMQs stint before the new Tory leader takes over. The two gingers were gracious to each other; Rayner said she’d miss him and did the heart sign with her hands.
Although the session was testing as usual, Angie carried her burden lightly, without that sense of embattlement exuded by her boss. It’s a neuro thing: she’s tough, but she’s a normie.
The opening exchanges were on familiar lines, with Labour relying on Starmerite counterattacks, evasions and non-sequiturs. Dowden asked what Labour’s definition of ‘working people’ was; Rayner said it was the people the Tories had failed for fourteen years. Five million small businesses affected? Labour would sort out the mess they had inherited. Wasn’t raising employer NI a job tax and a £5 billion hit to the economy? The new employment bill would raise living standards.
Angie agreed on the value of our relationship with the Commonwealth and the efforts of the King and the late Queen; perhaps there was a deeper significance in the combination of her red hair, white jacket and blue dress? Then she laid into the Conservatives’ past failures and the ‘chaos’ they had left behind. This was old-fashioned Saturday TV wrestling: nothing personal, Oliver. Ding ding!
It was the later rounds that presented more challenges, holds that might be harder to break.
As Kim Leadbeater’s gestating euthanasia Bill slouches towards its November debate, Rachael Maskell raised the issue of palliative care for the terminally ill. Would the deputy PM consider a commission? Rayner praised carers and said discussions had begun – another deflection avoiding expensive commitments. Later, Kim Johnson asked whether hospices should have to rely less on charity; again, this was important, but a matter for further discussion.
Daisy Cooper highlighted the need for more care workers in the coming NHS winter crisis of patients who cannot be discharged without a care plan, and the effect of increased employer NI on the budgets of 18,000 small care providers. As in previous PMQs, the answer combined the aspiration to grow the economy with a reluctance to anticipate the Chancellor’s Budget, due next week.
Monica Harding told us 1,800 Surrey children with special needs (e.g. autism) had no provision; the reply was sympathy and, again, to await the Budget.
As Chancellor, Rachel Reeves has so many circles to square – as does the PM!
Mike Tapp (Labour, Dover) spoke of migrants’ deaths in the Channel; the stock answer was the inherited asylum chaos, the new Border Security Command and the need to target the people smugglers. Unmentioned was the derogation or withdrawal from the ECHR that one of the Tory leadership candidates is touting.
Related, perhaps, was Sir Edward Leigh’s request for an assurance that RAF Scampton could be sold off without being covered with new housing. Odd how a radical government evades certain radical solutions, bearing in mind that our recent population increase is more than entirely due to net immigration, the low wage end of which – as the OBR decided last month – harms our GDP per capita.
Land management also featured in questions from:
- Helen Morgan (inundation of Shropshire farms. Answer: ‘14 years’, etc., plans to improve flood defences);
- Blake Stephenson (risk of building on flood plains. Answer: commitment to build 1.5 million new homes, need for better infrastructure);
- Sir John Hayes (Grade 1 and 2 farmland threatened by giant pylons and solar panels – food and energy production in conflict. Answer: both important and “we will get Britain building again”.)
Rayner remained confident – bullish – but Labour is beginning to look like the proverbial chameleon placed on a tartan cloth.
