Watch: Lammy flounders in Rayner defence

When you’re in a hole, who gonna call? David Lammy! Yes, the Shadow Foreign Secretary was out on the airwaves this morning, chivalrously, if quixotically, riding to the rescue of his under-fire deputy leader. Angela Rayner is facing claims she may have wrongly avoided capital gains tax and broken electoral law, with the Mail on Sunday today publishing photos of her describing as ‘home’ a different property from the one she told the authorities was her principal residence. Whoops!

So out went brave Lammy, the Talleyrand of Tottenham, to dodge and dissemble as best he can. He first appeared on the BBC, telling Laura Kuenssberg that Rayner ‘has a blended family like millions of Britons’ and asking ‘Why do we land on this northern woman?’ Steerpike would gently point out to Lammy that tax rules in the north of England are just the same as in the south and that the ‘millions’ of Britons living in such ‘blended families’ don’t end up facing questions over whether they broke electoral law…

Having insisted that ‘there’s nothing new in this story’ (wrong) Lammy then went on Sky News where presenter Sir Trevor Phillips asked the obvious question: ‘If she’s had this advice, why doesn’t she publish it?’ noting that ‘A year ago she complained that Mr Sunak had published his tax returns as Labour demanded “only after much delay”.