Dominic Raab, Angela Rayner and the ‘approving wink’

Dominic Raab has been subjected to widespread mockery from political pundits and social media commentators after appearing to wink at Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner while speaking in the House of Commons.

The “unexpected facial expression” was made as the deputy prime minister and justice secretary stood in for an absent Boris Johnson at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, leaving Rayner likewise deputising for Keir Starmer, said LBC.

More ‘vaudeville than Twitter-storm’

“It made a happy change to have Raab and Rayner performing the noonday music-hall turn rather than the tired, snippy duo of Johnson and Starmer,” wrote political sketch writer Quentin Letts in The Times, noting that the tone at this week’s PMQs was more “vaudeville than Twitter-storm”.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Letts said he “welcomed the variety”, adding: “This time the buttoned, respectable, tight-bottomed lawyer was on the government side and the scatter-gun maniac was representing Labour. Was there, even before the wink, a certain frisson in the air?”

Indeed, agreed The Telegraph’s sketch writer, Madeline Grant: “Keir vs Boris can sometimes feel like watching a slow-paced undertaker trying and failing to pin down Ronald McDonald in a game of tag. This was more like a frisson at a work party; plenty of smirking, light ribbing and side-eyed glances”.

A ‘roguish wink’

Raab made the expression as he accused the deputy Labour leader of having “flip-flopped” in her position on striking rail workers. “First she said they were lose-lose. Then she tweeted workers were left with no choice,” he told the Commons on Wednesday.

Raab said that when Rayner “was asked by the BBC – a straight question, she's normally a straight shooting politician – ‘do you like the RMT?’, she said ‘I’m going to have to go now, I’ve got a train to catch’.”

It was then that he attempted his “roguish wink at Rayner”, wrote Grant, “though not being one of nature’s rogues, Raab’s angling wasn’t quite clear.” It was “a skewed sort of a wink, an unparliamentary spasm of the eye that could just as easily have been intended for Ian Blackford, seated on the other side of the aisle”, she said.

Rayner jabs back

Raab went on to accuse the party of “champagne socialism” after Rayner was pictured drinking champagne while listening to opera at Glyndebourne.

If the government’s “main attack line” against Labour is that they’re supposed to be “a bunch of hardline Corbynistas who are personally responsible for the rail strikes, it was a bit confusing to hear Raab denouncing Rayner for not joining a picket line”, said The Critic.

“But it was hard to get away from the idea that Raab’s main joke was simply that Rayner, a woman who is Not Posh, had Done A Posh Thing,” the magazine added.

Far from being outdone by Raab’s jibe, Rayner later told journalists that her advice to the deputy prime minister was to “cut out the snobbery and brush up on his opera”.

“The Marriage of Figaro is the story of a working-class woman who gets the better of a privileged but dim-witted villain. Judging by his own performance today, Dominic Raab could learn a lesson about opening up the arts to everyone, whatever their background,” she said.

“No doubt the perma-aggrieved” will call Raab’s comments “snobbery”, said Grant in The Telegraph. But in the Commons “everyone chuckled away, privately dreading next week’s return to normal”.

Raab misunderstood

Sources close to Raab have since claimed he was not winking at Rayner, but rather had directed an “approving wink” at Ian Murray, the shadow Scotland secretary, who had been “braying loudly” on the Labour front bench and talking up Rayner’s potential as a future leader, reported The Times.

But a Labour source told the paper: “The deputy prime minister winking like a dirty old man at Ian – I doubt it.”

Labour MP Toby Perkins tweeted: “I will never unsee Dominic Raab’s wink from the despatch box at Angela Rayner. I feel soiled.”

Boris Johnson also appeared to distance himself from Raab’s remarks, as a spokesperson insisted to The Times that there should be no class barriers to enjoying opera.