A totally unmemorable PMQs for Raab and Rayner

Rishi Sunak missed PMQs to attend Betty Boothroyd’s funeral and a half-empty chamber watched the deputies, Dominic Raab and Angela Rayner, slug it out. Rayner, always a crowd-pleaser, began by hailing the late Paul O’Grady as ‘a true northern star.’ And she had fun with the new crackdown on street thuggery or ‘anti-social behaviour’ as our genteel government puts it. Rayner linked this to the Dominic ‘Raabspierre’ allegations made by a handful of snowflake civil servants who felt that the Justice Secretary had mistreated them. It was good knockabout stuff.

Rayner suggested that Raab had personal knowledge of louts ‘exploding in fits of rage and creating a culture of fear, and maybe even, I don’t know, throwing things?’ Raab guessed this was coming. ‘I can assure you, Madam Deputy Speaker,’ he said coldly, ‘I’ve never called anyone scum.’

Then they tussled over rape statistics and Rayner continually muddled up complainants with victims in order to increase the government’s apparent failures.