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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Gaby Hinsliff

It’s fair that Angela Rayner is subject to scrutiny – but not if it’s based on snobbery

Angela Rayner and Richard Parker, Labour's West Midlands mayoral candidate, during a visit to Perry Barr bus depot in Birmingham, 11 April.
Angela Rayner and Richard Parker, Labour's West Midlands mayoral candidate, during a visit to Perry Barr bus depot in Birmingham, 11 April. Photograph: Jacob King/PA

Angela Rayner has never, to the best of my knowledge, advocated eating people. Nor has she publicly insisted on her right to wear a colander on her head.

In the Westminster scandal stakes, that makes her a positive lightweight compared with the Reform candidates suspended last weekend after being accused of these and other eccentricities, let alone to the hardened offenders already in parliament. She’s never been fined for breaking Covid rules, unlike two prime ministers I could mention: nor has she been accused, like some of their colleagues, of bullying civil servants, sexual misconduct or sending an explicit picture to someone on Grindr before panicking and handing over colleagues’ phone numbers to a potential honeytrapper.

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