Angela Rayner continues to claim, to mockery on Twitter, that she fully supports Trident and has never supported unilateral disarmament. The Deputy Leader said to the BBC that she voted against renewal back in 2016 because multilateral disarmament wasn’t in the bill:

“I haven’t changed my mind. The vote that we had some years ago mentioned nothing about multilateral disarmament and what I feel is really important for the long term is that globally we should be looking at disarmament of nuclear weapons, but that has to be done in combination with other countries.”

A Labour official repeated that defence to the ever-credulous Guardian: “A Labour source said Rayner did not vote to renew Trident in 2016 because the wording of the motion did not include a commitment to multilateral disarmament.” A weak defence even if it were true…

If either Labour or The Guardian actually bothered reading the motion that Rayner voted against they would have seen it clearly spelled out:

“the UK remains committed to reducing its overall nuclear weapon stockpile by the mid-2020s; and supports the Government’s commitment to continue work towards a safer and more stable world, pressing for key steps towards multilateral disarmament.“

That means Rayner has actually voted against multilateral disarmament as well as Trident. What reason could she have for that?