The Right’s Sick Rayner Obsession

One senses immediately whether a politician is genuine, unselfish, enthusiastic, an asset to their party, someone who can persuade others to stand in their corner, who empathises readily not only with voters, but their whole family group. Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner is one such. It is why she is now the target of some seriously obsessive behaviour.

Evening all

Ms Rayner is the one who must step in if Keir Starmer were to become indisposed. Unlike her party leader, who all too often looks a little stiff, too upright, visibly ill at ease with some lines of questioning, she is a natural. The thought has no doubt entered with the right that Labour’s poll numbers would improve under her leadership, if such a thing were possible.

Right now, the Tories are looking at a General Election thrashing; if Ms Rayner were in charge, they would be looking at a Canada-style wipeout. Hence the attempts to pull her down a peg or two, many of which have come from the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker, where the disciples of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre have leapt from gutter to sewer.

First came the claim that Ms Rayner was wont to do a Basic Instinct-style flashing of now disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. The Mail has suggested she owned up to having done this. But this was a vicious and malicious pack of lies; she had done no such thing. Even the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog showed this wasn’t possible. But now The Great Guido is also smearing.

Maybe someone has goaded Staines, telling him the hard truth that he is not as influential as he thinks he is, that he is no longer strong, if he ever was in the first place. Maybe the Fawkes massive wants to show that they still have what it takes to bring someone down. But here a credibility problem enters.

As Tory MP Michael “Wiggy” Fabricant told last Thursday, “On the 13th March 2024, I posted on X a comment on a Guido article which claimed that Dale Vince, a Labour Party donor, is a supporter of Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation. This post referenced an article published by the website GuidoFawkes which included an edited clip of an interview with Dale Vince that had been taken out of context”. Ah, Fawkes and context. Do go on.

“The full clip of the interview makes it very clear that Dale does not support Hamas or its actions on October 7th last year. I am very pleased to hear this. Accordingly, I have now deleted that tweet, apologise[d] to Dale, and hope this now sets the record very clear”. Folks might not believe Staines.

But the Mail titles are still smearing, hence today’s Mail on Sunday thundering “MoS unearths photos taken by Labour’s deputy [leader] that expose truth about house row … IN HER OWN TWEETS … THE PROOF RAYNER HAS BEEN LYING”. Mail titles using words like “truth” and “proof”, then calling “liar” on someone else? Another credibility problem. But not for one Mail hack.

The MoS’ not even slightly celebrated blues artiste Whinging Dan Hodges was more than prepared to bat for his supper. “We now know Angela Rayner lied [no independent citation]. So what happened to Keir Starmer's fine words about honesty and integrity” he told, once more missing the question mark.

Dan Neidle told Desperate Dan “Your statement here is not correct. Married couples have one main residence for CGT purposes. Whether *she* lived in Vicarage Road during the marriage isn’t terribly relevant to the tax”. What say Hodges? “She says the second property was her ‘home’”. Neidle was unmoved. “Doesn’t change the tax”. Another observer was also unmoved.

“A photo on Facebook hardly proves that one way or the other”. Which is the MoS’ clincher. And another onlooker mused “Question Dan Hodges needs to answer is why he started another thread on this after being told by Dan Neidle that he was wrong on the law”. Hodges had sniffed “Question Angela Rayner needs to answer is if she does have advice saying everything was in the rules, why did she continue to lie about where she was actually living”.

The Mail on Sunday is not the law. Nor is The Great Guido. And maybe they should sort out their sick obsession. We see you, Tory errand boys.

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