QUENTIN LETTS from Westminster: Did Big Ange simply examine her housing coverage to the Titanic? Indeed she did!

Did Angela Rayner just compare her housing policy – the Government’s flagship – to the Titanic? Indeed she did. Looked pleased with the analogy, too.

The civil servant next to her was possibly less delighted. Did one of those watery-eyed gulps you see when a guest at a book launch has been incautious enough to down a cocktail sausage in one, realising too late that the snorker was blisteringly hot.

Fire hydrant orderlies, at the double!

Mrs Rayner was at the Commons housing select committee. ‘What do we call you, Secretary of State or Deputy Prime Minister, or Ange?’ inquired soft Florence Eshalomi (Lab, Vauxhall) who chairs the committee.

Mrs Rayner bared her teeth and laughed that she didn’t give a fig. A shaft of electric light glinted off one of her fangs. It had a blinding, paralysing effect on three new Labour women who were sitting down one flank of the U-shaped table. 

Chris Curtis (Lab, Milton Keynes N) started shaking badly. What big teeth you have, Grandma, said Little Red Riding Hood.

Big Ange had sauntered up the corridor beforehand with a careless confidence. Her permanent secretary, Sarah Healey, had already been there for some time, lines forming on her brow when it began to look as if the minister might be late.

Ms Healey is the mandarin who earned notoriety three years ago by saying that she enjoyed working from home because it gave her time to ride her £1,350 Peloton exercise bicycle.

Angela Rayner, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government arrives at Downing Street for a weekly Cabinet Meeting

Did Angela Rayner just compare her housing policy – the Government’s flagship – to the Titanic? Indeed she did. Looked pleased with the analogy, too

Ms Healey (pictured) is the mandarin who earned notoriety three years ago by saying that she enjoyed working from home because it gave her time to ride her £1,350 Peloton exercise bicycle

All that pedalling but never an inch of progress: Sarah Healey was a perfect metaphor for Whitehall. Her minister in those Peloton-jockeying days was Nadine Dorries.

Now she has won Angela Rayner in the raffle. Some civil servants have all the luck.

Yesterday afternoon’s meeting got underway and we were soon lost in a blizzard of piffle. Mrs Rayner was full of beans. Words flew from her in a torrent. The physical feat of talking so long and loudly was remarkable. 

You can see how she developed such a strong jaw. It was working like bilge pumps in Venice during high water. She must have mandibular muscles as big as Usain Bolt’s hamstrings.

The topic was the Starmer Government’s promise to build 1.5 million homes, something many say is impossible. Mrs Rayner threw back her mane in defiance.

Lee Dillon (Lib Dem, Newbury) asked a question. Mrs Rayner launched into a sentence that lasted three minutes and 15 seconds. Clauses begat sub-clauses which themselves developed progeny of their own.

An entire grammatical eco-system was contained within one enormous, glurped, saliva-sloppy sentence.

And it gushed forth from her tender lips, as they say in Whitehall, ‘at pace’.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner make a visit to a construction site on December 12, 2024 in Cambridgeshire

Asked to explain how all her shiny new houses were going to be built, Mrs Rayner conceded the turnaround would not happen instantly (file image)

In her haste to communicate, ‘houses’ and ‘homes’ were conflated and became a new word, ‘houms’. The verb ‘recognise’ lost its ‘g’. Man overboard. ‘I can whack lyrical about it,’ cried Mrs Rayner, quite unfazed that she meant ‘wax’, or indeed that she was talking raw gibberish.

Beside her Ms Healey nodded, hard. She looked terrified.

There was something about her that reminded me of Hyacinth Bucket’s neighbour, Elizabeth, in the television comedy Keeping Up Appearances. Once or twice Ms Healey made sycophantic interjections. Big Ange cast her imperious gaze in the other direction. She possibly considers Ms Healey a posh crawler. 

But not as much of a suck-up as Mr Curtis, who was now telling Mrs Rayner it was ‘clearly fantastic what has already been achieved’. His hands were trembling so much, you could see why he wears one of those scrofulous little semi-beards. Might cut himself to threads with a razor.

Asked to explain how all her shiny new houses were going to be built, Mrs Rayner conceded the turnaround would not happen instantly. ‘It’s a bit like the Titanic, not like a hackney cab,’ she averred proudly.

Mr Curtis boggled a bit and, while trying to suggest that the 1.5 million target might need some reconsidering, said ‘you expect a bit of leakage, then?’ Leakage on the Titanic? Surely not.