QUENTIN LETTS: Had Mount Angela been capped?

Angela Rayner (Lab, Ibiza Town), back from the Balearics, had swapped her disco garb for a more sober mien. 

But was our new deputy PM on top of her parliamentary game? She seemed jaded. Her replies at Housing and Communities questions were read lifelessly from civil-service notes. 

She put little wallop into her replies. Ayoub Khan (Ind, Perry Bar) referred to her as ‘the Secretary of Straight’ and you could understand his slip of the tongue. This Rayner was not the human volcano of popular acclaim. 

Any vulcanologists hoping to witness Parliament’s very own Eyjafjallajökull – it is a volcano in Iceland, not a Raynerish insult about capitalists – will have been disappointed. 

There was barely a wisp of smoke rising from her summit .At one point she actually started dribbling on about how she wanted to ‘celebrate our differences and bring communities together’ and how the Tories were guilty of ‘stoking division’. 

Our volcanic new Deputy PM Angela Rayner looked jaded. Her replies at Housing and Communities questions were read lifelessly from civil-service note

Had Mrs Rayner (Lab, Ibiza Town) been outmanoeuvred in Whitehall and told that pensioners living on their own will have to pay more council tax?

This from the woman whose political popularity has been built on jaunty aggression and calling opponents ‘scum’. Quizzed about racial tensions, she resorted to some stuff about Islamophobia, but then was unable to define that term. 

Asked why the Government was diluting a planning requirement for new buildings to be beautiful, she almost whimpered an answer about officialdom fearing such things could ‘lead to inconsistencies in decision-making’.

Had Mount Angela been capped? Those hoping for dramatic eruptions had travelled in vain. As the session played out, we were possibly given a hint as to what might have muted the ginger dynamo.

Had she been outmanoeuvred in Whitehall and told that pensioners living on their own will have to pay more council tax? More of this in a moment.

It was Westminster’s first day back after the summer break and the Conservatives were starting a leadership election. It’s what they do. House martins nest in eaves, sloths dangle upside-down from trees and Tories hold leadership elections.

Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly’s beard both held their campaign launches.

Mr Cleverly’s beard, which has assumed complete control of the former home secretary, exuded blowy confidence.

James Cleverly’s beard, which has assumed complete control of the former home secretary, exuded blowy confidence during his campaign launch on Monday

Kemi Badenoch had ditched her spectacles for her launch, making her look a bit startled but much less like Ronnie Corbett; the lack of glasses also accentuated the gap in her upper front teeth

‘I know I’m the best candidate,’ averred the beard. Mr Cleverly was certain he was going to win! Uh-oh. They only say that when things are really bad.

He also talked of ‘granularity deliverables’ and claimed that he liked his team to contain ‘alphas’. And yet his MP supporters included that fruity little fellow Simon Hoare (North Dorset), who is more one of life’s beta minuses, and South West Hertfordshire’s Gagan Mohindra, who dresses like an Epsom bookie.

Mrs Badenoch had ditched her spectacles. This made her look a bit startled but much less like Ronnie Corbett; the lack of glasses also accentuated the gap in her upper front teeth.

You could park the top of a ballpoint pen in between those teeth or store a folded twenty-pound note there. Jolly useful. Gappy teeth did Terry-Thomas and Dame Jilly Cooper no harm but it must make eating corn on the cob a little messy. 

And Mrs Badenoch, chuckling and exuding a certain modernity, was there in the Commons to irritate the sub-par Mrs Rayner. 

She invited the deputy PM to reassure the House that the Government had no plan to increase council tax.

Mrs Rayner snapped ‘yes’ and looked pleased to have caused surprise with the brevity of her reply. 

But when Graham Stuart (Con, Beverley) pressed her further on this and hoped that widows and their ilk would not lose the council-tax discount they currently receive for single-occupancy of a property, Mrs Rayner would do no such thing. 

Instead she blustered against the Opposition. This ignited immediate suspicion that Mrs Rayner has lost a battle with the Treasury. 

As with beauty in planning decisions, bureaucracy (ie Sue Gray) perhaps regards the single-occupancy discount as an ‘inconsistency’. 

Oh, and Speaker Hoyle mistook Aldridge’s Wendy Morton (woman) for Mel Stride (man). 

New monocle for Mr Speaker, please. That or a change of hairdresser for poor Mrs Morton.