Angela Rayner has used a big speech to the TUC to brand Reform’s biggest donors ‘a couple of off-shore billionaires trying to buy our democracy’. Labour, she went on, would defend that democracy against any ‘fascist oligarch’ who ‘seeks to divide our country and buy our politics.’

That demagoguery is not quite the sort of thing she was preaching ten years ago. Addressing the same TUC Congress in September 2016, in the aftermath of Jo Cox’s murder, Rayner urged delegates to honour Cox through ‘the example we set’, reminding them that ‘we have more in common than what divides us’. What happened Ange?

Calling every right-wing politician a fascist weakens our ability to distinguish and oppose real fascism should it actually rear its ugly head

Calling every right-wing politician a fascist weakens our ability to distinguish and oppose real fascism should it actually rear its ugly head

Does Rayner really believe that Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne are fascists? Or was this purely cynical political oratory? Whichever it is, her language is shameful.

I hesitate before using that word because we have already quite enough tone policing in our politics. Barely a day goes by without the right being accused by progressives of peddling hateful and divisive rhetoric. Charges of........

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