A swing and a miss for Rayner and Reeves as they launch Labour’s latest canapé offensive

“PLEASE welcome the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner!” announced a monotonous and disembodied voice, as if the MP for Ashton-under-lyme were a rail replacement bus service.

It was Rayner’s job to provide a few cricket-related gags to warm up the audience of business leaders at The Oval for the latest part of Labour’s canapé offensive. Frankly, a hastily co-opted coach between Didcot Parkway and Reading would have done a better job of the jokes.

The deputy leader tried to make excruciating lines about cricketing technical terms into some extended metaphor for a Labour victory.

It was exactly as bad as it sounds. Never mind “googlies”, the technical term Rayner best embodied was “dying on your a--e”.

Even more agonising were her attempts at mateyness. “I tell you what,” she said, leaning chummily across the lectern. “I feel a lot more comfortable in the company of business leaders than I do in the halls of Westminster. The historic halls of Parliament are not exactly welcoming to a working-class girl from Stockport.”

Whereas at the CBI, it’s basically like an episode of Corrie. On Threadneedle Street, you can barely move for flat caps and whippets.

Still, Rayner’s turn was like An Audience with Liberace compared to the main event. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, spoke with all the ease of a haunted ventriloquist’s dummy.

In fact, she might as well be one given that her policies– on everything from bankers’ bonuses to corporation tax rates – seem to be simply those of Jeremy Hunt. Back in October, Labour’s position on the former could best be summed up by the Harry and Paul Question Time sketch: “If the bankers the bonuses the bankers the bonuses the bankers the bonuses it’s disgusting!” It took a full three months for Labour to announce they would be following the Government’s lead in dropping the cap.

If the ideas were pure Hunt, the rhetoric was a mish-mash of politicians past. “Talent is equally distributed around the country, opportunity is not”, she trilled, quoting Boris Johnson c.2019. Reeves defined her approach as “securonomics” – a peerless bit of gobbledegook destined to sink without trace.

A rather baffling profile in Politico recently claimed Britain was “learning to love Keir Starmer’s right-hand woman, Rachel Reeves”. It was as if someone had written a heroic epic about All Bran, or written a panegyric in honour of Windolene.

The truth, I suspect, is that most Britons haven’t much of a clue who she is but know that they – currently – hate the Conservatives more. That will have to do for now.