𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

As Sir Keir Starmer’s position becomes ever more precarious, Angela Rayner can barely contain her excitement at the prospect of an imminent leadership contest. So great is her trembling anticipation of a possible victory that, on one recent occasion, she is said to have lost her physical coordination and intellectual coherence. According to several witnesses, in the Strangers’ Bar at Westminster last week, she became agitated during a late-night argument with colleagues about the collapse of socialism. The exchanges grew intense, until, like the Berlin Wall, she herself collapsed, falling against a door with considerable force.

Fortunately, she did not sustain any injuries though the door had to undergo repair. To her critics, this episode feeds into the narrative that she is unfit for the highest office. Indeed, within the Labour Party, there is now a determined “anyone but Ange” lobby, which holds that she is too ill-disciplined to be entrusted with vital duties of the premiership like the possession of the nuclear codes.

In this negative portrayal, a parallel can be found with another forceful, working-class Labour Deputy Leader: George Brown, whose career in the 1960s was undermined by his fractious political relationships and his weakness for alcohol.

In one notorious incident when he was Foreign Secretary, he went to a diplomatic reception and became so entranced by the orchestral music that he turned to a figure in a red dress and asked for a waltz. Deeply offended, the red-clad figure rejected the request on three grounds: “First, you’re drunk. Second, this isn’t a waltz, it’s the Peruvian national anthem. And third, I am the cardinal Archbishop of Lima.”

Doubts about Brown’s sobriety helped to ensure his defeat by his bitter rival Harold Wilson in the 1963 Labour leadership contest. Rayner’s enemies want the same to happen to her. But her supporters deny the accusation that she was intoxicated that night in Strangers’. They see such charges as a form of snobbish, misogynistic character assassination, which fails to recognise the obstacles that she overcame on her journey to the top.

Brought up in poverty on a Stockport council estate by her mentally ill mother, she had her first child at just 16 and began work as a carer. It would be wrong, however, to wallow in victimhood too much. Plenty of successful politicians have had backgrounds even tougher than hers, like the first Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald – the illegitimate son of a ploughman.

But it would be equally unfair to rule her out of contention because of Puritanical disapproval of her indulgences. If we are to use a kind of historical breathalyser on the leading politicians of the past, many of the greatest stars would have failed including Winston Churchill, who took his first restorative at breakfast and continued in the same manner for the rest of the day.

Nor was the long-serving Liberal Leader Henry Asquith distinguished by his restraint, hence his nickname of Squiffy. “Supine, sodden, supreme,” was one colleague’s description of him. Margaret Thatcher was another whiskey enthusiast, while William Pitt the Younger said that his doctors’ orders required him to drink several bottles of port a day.

Angela Rayner is a deeply flawed politician whose attachment to the oppressive ideology of socialism makes her wholly unsuited to be Prime Minister. She is too much the creature of the trade unions, too childishly partisan.

Remember, this is an MP who called her Tory opponents “scum”. Her much vaunted “authenticity” is overdone, and she is not nearly as popular with the public as deluded activists think. But, if there is a leadership battle soon, she should be challenged on her extreme policies and dismal record, not her ability to pass a purity test from the Temperance League.