Among the questions I found myself asking this week was how much does it matter if a top politician looks too much like a film star? After all, any number of male politicians have been photographed in slick, sharp suits. Tony Blair survived the row over the garish, grossly expensive designer swimming trunks he once wore holidaying on a yacht in Sicily.
But the world isn’t fair, the playing field isn’t level; and when I first looked at that picture of Angela Rayner, emerging from the back of a plush car on her way to a cabinet meeting in a cream-coloured jacket, with bright green trousers, eyes hidden behind chunky, angular, mint-and-tortoiseshell sunglasses, I thought: “Uh-oh! This won’t end well.” As we know, it really hasn’t.
Even in the light of recent tumultuous events, it is worth interrogating these initial thoughts. There is no law that says that politicians must be nondescript, or wear outfits made from hessian sacks. Similarly, there is no law that says Labour politicos or anyone else of progressive ambition and/or outlook must be drab and sombre. The Daily Mail loves to deride “champagne socialists”, to which you fire back the adage of the radical American union leader of yore, Big Bill Haywood: “nothing is too good”, he said, for the working class. In addition, society too often unfairly critiques women for their appearance – not least the Daily Mail, for whom the picture was Labour-bashing catnip.
But still, “uh-oh”: not because of the look itself, but the context of any political leader – subject, as they all are these days, to accusations of elitism – appearing in oversized sunglasses, as if swishing from a limo at Cannes.
That “uh-oh” was initially a sense of vague uneasiness, with no knowledge of what was to come. But once Rayner hit big trouble over the underpayment of stamp duty on her £800k seaside flat – a deficiency hovering around the £40,000 mark – that picture became a thousand words, none of them helpful to Rayner’s chances of survival.
The row alone was perilous, but together with that image, it became a perfect storm from which her public image could not recover. That’s politics. Be glad the likes of you and I can step out in whatever snazzy sunglasses we like.
Did Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch look up at the TV on Tuesday and say “Uh-oh”, on seeing Zack Polanski had won the Green leadership by a country mile? Part of me hopes they did. I think they should have. He looks ready for a scrap.
It’s difficult to know how much store to set by a Green leadership campaign, but this feels like a moment. Starmer is tanking, Badenoch is bad, and come the next election, with a few more Green MPs and a hung parliament, the Greens could have some leverage. Polanski came in swinging, dubbing Farage a charlatan. As for Starmer, he said: “I cannot imagine any scenario in which I would want to work with Keir Starmer” – and by this point, many a Labour MP has probably said the same. But note the language: “I cannot imagine any scenario” is what I like to call a catflap: the door appears closed, but there is a way out. Michael Heseltine, in the mists that were the 1990s, denied Tory leadership ambitions with the line: “I can forsee no circumstances under which a challenge would take place.” He challenged for it later that year. These are the tricks, Zack. These are the big leagues.
I was pleased last week to run a piece by Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, who – as befits a man of the cloth – assailed the view that fun is to be had terrorising asylum seekers in hotels and suggesting they be burnt down. This opposing view may not seem radical from a theologian, but it was worth saying.
Would that there was an actual archbishop of Canterbury to say it, but since November last year, when Justin Welby fell to earth, the position has been vacant. Normally nobody would worry about an archbishopatorial hiatus, but at a time in our politics when, for some, turning the other cheek means insouciance about deporting women and children to countries where they may face death, one is entitled to expect some kind of lofty moral intervention. To be honest, The Vicar of Dibley would do for me at this stage.
Angela Rayner arriving at Downing Street on 2 September, the day before she admitted not paying enough stamp duty on her Hove flat. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images
