PMQs sketch: Dowden and Rayner build fragile house of cards
Practice makes perfect, the saying goes. Put in 1,000 hours at anything – even facing down the braying green benches opposite you – and improvement is all but guaranteed.
It’s a truism thrown into sharp relief at times, including when Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer take a break from Prime Minister’s Questions.
Handing over to their deputies this lunchtime – with just a week to go ahead of the landmark local elections – was a lesson in just how that week on week on week practice has served both politicians well.
In contrast, deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner’s efforts to bluster her way past deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden’s well-rehearsed jibes over her living arrangement fell flat at times.
Dowden, in fairness, tripped up before he’d even got going, stumbling over his words in response to a starter for ten from Jonathan Gullis. Although it’s possible he may have just been yet to recover his hearing following the Commons cacophony Gullis generated…
Adopting the Corbynite tactic of bringing up the experiences of individual voters, Rayner went in on Natalie, whose plight of being served with two no fault eviction notices in Brighton, Dowden insisted his party was voting to address today.
However, Rayner pointed out, despite the attempted silken delivery, he seemed to have forgotten to check the latest status of the bill, with housing charities dropping their support for Michael Gove’s plans to abolish section 21 notices, branding the legislation a “failure”.
But with neither stand in appearing particularly at home on the topic of housing, it was onto a whizz round of pre-May 2 highlights from “3am calls from bad men” to bankrupt Labour run councils.
Those in glass houses very much continued throwing stones, accusing one another of “political opportunism versus reminding viewers of the former Prime Ministers’ “twisted victory lap”.
And no, she didn’t mean Lord David Cameron on his third Central Asian state this week.
In bruising style Rayner had clearly taken inspiration from Taylor Swift’s latest diatribe against “the smallest man who ever lived”, branding the Prime Minister a “pint sized loser” in a piece of Reputation-worthy vitriol. (His press spokesperson later primly insisted Sunak was “more focused on the job in hand”.)
But despite an admittedly valiant effort, by the final round, Dowden had his opponent on the back foot, even triggering a noticeable stumble of her own. And landing the knockout blow on the “right honourable landlady” he secured this week’s win.