“All MPs do it.” Angela Rayner’s contribution to Operation Change The Subject To The Work Of Change wasn’t starting very well. As answers to the criticism that you’re all as bad as each other go, this is really about the worst one you can give. 

Rayner had been sent out to face the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg at the start of the Labour conference in Liverpool. The slot is usually taken by the leader, but Keir Starmer had been on the show two weeks ago. (This didn’t stop a few Tories suggesting he was scared of scrutiny, and lacked the manly dignity of a prime minister hiding in a fridge.) 

It’s quite possible that when Labour planned its media appearances for the autumn, Rayner would have wanted this prime slot, seeing it as a chance to show how central she is to the government. She could hardly have known that she would be flying into a storm of flak over who exactly has been paying for everyone’s clothes and holidays. Fully half the 24-minute interview was given over to questions about Labour’s various messes.

There was Togsgate, the Frock Horror Show, Loot For Suits, the Dress Fuss Affair. Labour peer Lord Alli’s habit of funding new wardrobes for his colleagues has dominated headlines in recent days, leading journalists to write earnest pieces about those headlines, under other headlines that suggest the party really needs to do something about all these headlines. 

Rayner’s defence was, in essence, that we only know about these gifts because they have been declared, and that makes them alright. “Donations for gifts and hospitality and monetary donations have been a feature of our politics for a very long time,” she said. 

Kuenssberg asked about Rayner’s holiday in New York. The answer was the same: a friend (Lord Alli, since you ask) had offered her the use of his apartment. She had, she said, gone above and beyond what was required in declaring it. “I paid for my holiday!” she insisted. Why hadn’t she declared that her partner, then-MP Sam Tarry, stayed with her? “I didn’t go to New York with another person,” Rayner insisted. “That person went to New York and I met up with them.” It was a coincidence they’d both been there! Of all the penthouse apartments in all the world, he had to walk into the one she’d borrowed. 

Labour’s struggle to move on is hampered because Rayner and Starmer don’t seem to be completely clear what, if anything, they have actually done wrong. Indeed, the line seems to be that it was fine to take the gifts, but also that it has to stop. 

When she addressed the conference later, the deputy prime minister adopted the tactic of simply ignoring the whole business. “You entrusted us with the task of change, and we will not forget it,” she told the nation, or that section that was watching the news channel on a Sunday lunchtime. “You kept faith with us, and we will keep faith with you.”

“No complacency,” she declared, before doing the most complacent thing anyone can do at a Labour conference and denounce the wicked Tories. She’s not a natural orator, still a little nervous about delivering jokes, but the section on working as a home help was moving. “It was my job to look after the people who had once looked after me,” she said. “Retired professors, teachers, nurses, police officers. They needed my care in the last years and days of their life. Care that it was my honour to provide.” By the end of the speech, she’d found her confidence, even giving the camera a little wink as she finished. 

It’s Labour’s week, but it would be a shame not to mention the contribution of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, in the form of Tory attack dog Chris Philp, sent onto the BBC on Sunday morning to have fun with Starmer’s suits. His party, Kuenssberg pointed out, had gone through more than its share of scandals over donations in recent years. 

“Don’t forget I resigned as a minister in Boris Johnson’s government,” Philp replied, full of piety. “So I feel I’ve done my bit towards cleaning up British politics.” It was such a good line he used it again a few minutes later: “I feel I’ve done my bit.” 

This is an interesting development in the Conservative narrative of Boris Johnson, talking about him as though he was a natural disaster that struck the country, with Tory MPs summoned from the fields and factories to clean up the mess he left, all the while muttering about how frustrating it was that they’d simply had no previous clues as to what he was like. 

But how did this stain on public life reach such prominence, forcing heroes like Philp to rise against him? It’s a mystery that historians will have to wrestle with, although one clue lies in a 2019 tweet from Philp himself. “I have voted for Boris Johnson in the final round today,” it says. 

But in 2022 Philp did, we must not forget, Do His Bit. In fact, he holds the distinction of being one of the last ministers to resign from the Johnson government. Courage takes many forms, and perhaps one of them is taking an ethical stand after just 52 of your colleagues have led the way. Let no one sneer at Philp about stolen valour. After all, weren’t the men who joined the army on VE Day just as much heroes as the men who fought from 1939?

Really, don’t be too hard on him. Recasting events to put yourself in a favourable light? Let’s just accept that all MPs do it.