In this week's Who's Top, Who's Not: Rayner leaves Dowden reeling after PMQs, and Rishi returns to disgruntled Tory MPs amid his five plummeting pledges.
Flying high: Angela Rayner
Angela Rayner invoked the ghosts of deputy prime ministers’ past with a demolishing performance at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions. Rayner channelled John Prescott by asking Oliver Dowden, the Deputy Prime Minister, the same questions as her predecessor: pointing out that “tens of thousands of families are facing repossession and homelessness”. As Prescott did 27 years ago.
Downtrodden Dowden, standing in for Sunak for a second week running, replied with a lacklustre dig about Jeremy Corbyn supporting UK withdrawal from NATO. Rayner continued to pile on the pressure regarding child poverty and homelessness: telling Dowden that 400,000 more children of primary school age were growing up in poverty and there had been a 75 per cent rise in child homelessness.
In her best performance to date, Rayner painted the Conservatives as out of touch with the reality faced by the British public. Many may feel insulted by the Tories’ boast about their record in government whilst many continue to get poorer and pushed into poverty. In contrast, Rayner’s authentic working-class credentials are a huge asset for the Labour leadership who not only want to emphasise the PM as out of touch, but also want to guard against Starmer being a liberal London lawyer.
Middle ranking: Suella Braverman
The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, is battling both the courts and the House of Lords to achieve Sunak’s pledge of stopping small boat crossings. Braverman’s Illegal Migration Bill, currently returning from the House of Lords, would place a legal duty on the government to detain and remove those arriving in the UK illegally.
But it hasn’t been plain sailing, the bill has faced significant opposition in the Lords: forcing government compromises on detaining children and pregnant women. With recess looming, Braverman is under pressure to get the bill onto the statute books before Parliament’s summer break begins on Thursday. It is evident that the rhetoric around stopping the boats is going to be one of the Conservatives’ key attack lines in campaigning for the next general election. They will see it as a significant win if they can get the bill passed and operational. But it will probably be more electorally potent if the Rwanda planes continue to be grounded so that the Tories can blame the immigration issue on the blob/the establishment/the tooth fairy instead of their own policies.
Slowly sinking: Rishi Sunak
Remote working Rishi has been missing in action. He has missed two PMQs in a row – the last time this happened was in 1996 – with the latest due to the NATO leaders’ summit in Lithuania. He returned Wednesday night to host a supposedly morale-boosting hog roast at Downing Street amid the party’s continued struggle to recover in the polls.
Domestically, it is looking grim for Sunak, the latest economic figures show the economy shrank by 0.1% in May. As such, a further interest rate rise looks likely, regardless of the inflation rate for June when it is published next week. The pressure on household incomes continues to squeeze working families’ pockets across the country with little hope of respite. Sunak’s five pledges, which he urged voters to judge him on, are in trouble.
For pledges that originally looked unambitious and achievable, he has created a rod for his own back. The mountain Sunak has to climb to have a chance at winning the next general election seems ever taller. Advise for his next pledge: no more pledges.