Big Ange is back. From a sketchwriter’s point of view I have to say that this is marvellous news. Rayner is actually an exceptionally old-fashioned politician. She’s akin to the union barons of the past, or perhaps even more accurately, to the Democrat mob bosses who ran Chicago or New York from the middle of the 19th century. I can picture her turning No. 10 North into a sort of Tammany Hall operation where she dishes out service contracts to choice clients with gay abandon.
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Rayner’s way of conducting herself might echo the ‘beer and sandwiches’ sleaze of the past, but it has a more grating side. Had Ange just embraced her spivvery it would have just been another area where the government fell short, however, what makes it much more egregious is that it is married to breathtaking hypocrisy. Rayner sat down with Matt Chorley of the BBC and defended her decision to accept severance payments after resigning over her tax affairs, and not to repay the money now she is back in government. She tried to defend this on the basis that some of the Tories who did the same hadn’t been in the cabinet for very long at the time they were sacked. However, Rayner had previously called for much more exacting standards than this.
