I MUST confess I’m getting more and more smiles – nay, laughs! – out of the befuddled Labour Party than I ever dreamed possible. Hmm. Perhaps I should worry. Are the guffaws a symptom of my despair and derangement having hit rock bottom, and all that’s left is to respond hysterically to their daily doses of political insanity?
The mere sight or sound of the two words ‘Angela Rayner’ generally induces in me a low growl and gritting of teeth. The idea that this rudely brash, barely literate chancer could be the UK’s Prime Minister in just a matter of weeks is simply shocking, although I can picture her trying to win the affections of President Trump. She doesn’t mind putting the love puppies on show when it suits, our Ange (remember the raised Commons eyebrows when she was allegedly trying to distract Boris across the Despatch Box?)
But as Keir Starmer’s last days count inexorably down towards the May local elections and full-on Labour backbench panic, I read that Rayner has an autobiography/memoir ready to be launched. Really? Question one, obviously, amid the disbelieving chuckles, is ‘Who wrote it?’ I mean, for all his pathetic wimpiness at least Starmer can read and write, albeit his oratorial skills are as limited as hers.
Apparently the book is done and dusted, but being held back for now. A matter of timing, it seems. That makes eminent sense, given that her two likely 2026 career paths are either to Downing Street or ignominy for her continuing unexplained tax/residential/electoral dilly-dalliances.
That outcome may well be influenced by how dirty the eventual Labour leadership campaign gets and how desperately Starmer is determined to avoid his inevitable fate, but in the meantime, really, Angela, a book? Does it come with crayons for the kids (or your adoring Trades Union officials) to do some colouring-in? Maybe a bright ginger pencil attached for your ‘readers’ to fill in the dot-to-dot puzzles? I can’t see there being crosswords, unless they’re limited to one-syllable, four letter clues.
Seriously, it will be interesting to see who – if anyone – is credited with ‘assisting’ Ms Rayner in her vanity project. I trust she will have committed them to a binding Non-Disclosure Agreement, especially after witnessing journalist Isabel Oakeshott’s public and humiliating takedown of disgraced ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock after she ghost-wrote his whimpering apology of a book.
Speaking as a journalist/writer with some experience of such projects, I have to smile at the challenge of ‘capturing’ our delectable Ange’s everyday parlance in written, hopefully understandable form. Whatever the book’s current status, I cannot see it being unveiled while its key story sweeps alternately between human farce, political tragedy and national despair, with everyone involved clueless about the possible outcomes.
But I suspect Ms Rayner, with her long experience of happy endings, remains ape-grinningly confident of hand-crafting a suitable finish to this chapter.
