Angela Rayner attacking the PM for being short? Ooh… how low can she go?

The deputy Labour leader – standing in for Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions – was all harmless, knockabout fun… until her final question, when she suddenly pulled out a knuckleduster, says Joe Murphy

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner called the prime minister ‘a pint-sized loser’ (Sky News)

You know a joke has landed when even Penny Mordaunt comes off Wordle and struggles not to snigger. Mouth twitching, her poker face struggling not to collapse, the leader of the Commons almost needed oxygen after Angela Rayner’s jibe at the “pint-sized loser” she works for.

Attack, they say, is the best form of defence. Which is lucky because Rayner doesn’t do subtle. Verbal baseball bats are more her thing. Her insult of choice – “Tory scum!” – may have been decommissioned after the murder of David Amess MP, but the rage that drives Ange is undimmed.

And they were all out to get her: half the Conservative benches seemed to have prepared gags about capital gains tax.