Angela Rayner’s appearance on Marr’s LBC show last night was one for the ages. As if no one else remembers the last five years, Rayner suggested without a hint of irony that a Corbyn government “would have given” missiles to Ukraine, and that Jeremy was “very clear on his condemnation of Putin, long before it was popular to do that”. It’s amazing she kept a straight face.

Never mind the fact that Corbyn insisted the UK government send Novichock samples back to Russia for their own “testing” after Salisbury. Just ten days before the invasion of Ukraine last month, Corbyn signed this statement from the Stop the War coalition:

“…the British government has sent arms to Ukraine and deployed further troops to Eastern Europe, moves which serve no purpose other than inflaming tensions and indicating disdain for Russian concerns. It has also declared that Ukraine has a “sovereign right” to join NATO, when no such right exists to join it or any other military alliance.”

“We refute the idea that NATO is a defensive alliance, and believe its record in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Libya over the last generation, not to mention the US-British attack on Iraq, clearly proves otherwise.”

Russian concerns? Which way would Jeremy’s missiles have been firing?

UPDATE: Readers have also pointed out that elsewhere in the same interview Rayner also accused Putin of using nuclear weapons on British soil.