Angela Rayner forced Boris Johnson to tone down the partisan rhetoric – it did him a power of good

If the Labour deputy leader played it safe in today’s PMQs, the prime minister played it even safer, says John Rentoul

Angela Rayner stands in for Keir Starmer at PMQs (Parliament Live)

Anyone expecting high drama at Prime Minister’s Questions today will have been disappointed. Angela Rayner, the Labour deputy leader making her first appearance at the top of the bill, played it safe.  

She started with a tribute to “all those who fought for our country in the past”, after yesterday’s 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. Labour, under new management, patriotic: check.  

She had a clever device of saying she had received “a message from a man called Keir”, who wasn’t able to go to work today because his family had to wait for a coronavirus test – which had taken longer than the 24 hours the prime minister had once promised.  

This was the right subject to raise: it is what people are worried about. Unfortunately for her, the ground had been cut from under her brilliantly fashionable creepers a few minutes before when Keir Starmer, the absent Labour leader, announced on Twitter that his child’s test had come back negative. It had taken longer than 24 hours, but the force of the case study had been dissipated.  

Perhaps that was why, having raised the subject, Rayner then asked quite a different question, asking the prime minister, “who once earned £2,300 an hour”, how much an average care worker is paid.  

Naturally, Boris Johnson had no idea, but he could safely take refuge in George Osborne’s decision to raise the national minimum wage and to rename it the national living wage. But he also answered the question about testing that she hadn’t asked. After a mild dig at Starmer – “I don’t know why he is not here” – he said 89 per cent of test results came back “the next day”. This is subtly different from the original promise of a result within 24 hours, but it was enough to get him through an awkward moment in parliament.  

Rayner’s best line was delivered at the end of Johnson’s long first answer. “Oh, he’s finished,” she muttered, leaping suddenly to her feet to ask her second question. It was the only moment of spontaneity in her well-rehearsed questions, and it skewered the long-winded Johnson better than any of them.  

If Rayner played it safe, Johnson played it even safer. He was on his Sunday best behaviour and had obviously been given a seventh-degree drumming before being sent into the chamber: do not patronise a female opponent; do not mock; do not engage in aggressive partisanship.  

With immense restraint, the newly meek prime minister was polite and respectful. “She’s right to express the frustration of people across this country,” he said, when she came back to the difficulty of obtaining tests. His tone was the opposite of his usual boosterism. There had been a “colossal spike” in the number of people wanting tests, he said. The government faced difficult challenges, but the gist of his replies was that it is doing its best, with the help of the common sense of the British people.  

He should adopt the same tone when Starmer returns to the fray, because he came across well. When she raised the problem of some people still dying or giving birth alone because of misinterpreted coronavirus restrictions, he said “she’s entirely right” and promised to do something about it.  

By monopolising the market in bipartisan reasonableness, Johnson made Rayner’s last question, about the exemption from the “rule of six” for grouse shooting parties, look partisan and unreasonable. The class war attacks on the toff prime minister bounced off harmlessly.

Johnson’s demure demeanour persisted for the rest of the session. He brushed aside attacks on him for breaking international law from Ian Blackford, of the Scottish National Party, and Ed Davey, of the Liberal Democrats, with easy innocence.  

After the session was over, many of Johnson’s claims about England’s record on tests turned out to be questionable. Liz Kendall, the shadow social care minister, pointed out the UK does not do more tests than anywhere else in Europe: “Denmark does almost twice as many per 1,000 people – plus the UK figures include antibody tests, which other countries’ don’t.”

But by then, the prime minister was off to his next grilling, by the chairs of 14 parliamentary committees. Let us see how well he can maintain his well-drilled “bipartisan reasonableness” act then.