Angela Rayner’s crack team of Trident hating, Brexit bashing Corbynista SpAds will continue guiding her through the rough and tumble of Westminster life in MHCLG. Here are some of their more interesting views…

Alex Jones remains Rayner’s Senior Adviser. He was Head of Communications at GMB from 2015 to 2021. During his stint the GMB was found to be “institutionally sexist” in an independent report. The 17-member strong ‘Taskforce for Positive Change‘ formed by the senior team failed abjectly and GMB members went on strike this year over the scandal. Jones served as Head of External Affairs at the cranky socialist New Economics Foundation which came up with inspired suggestions such as: “it is always possible to find additional public resources for public services, even without growth: raise taxes, close tax loopholes, cut spending on nuclear warheads.” New minister Miatta Fahnbulleh headed up the NEF and is also advising Rayner…

Before GMB, Jones was Press and Public Affairs Manager at the National Union of Students when it organised the window-smashing “Tory scum” riots in London. Must have caught Rayner’s eye…

The team’s union links are deep. Former Head of Operations for Unite, Nick Parrott, is Rayner’s Chief of Staff. His wife Lisa Johnson was formerly the Director of External Relations at GMB.

Kate Robson continues as Rayner’s Political Adviser, a role she’s held since February 2022. Robson has shared posts supporting Corbyn, bashing meat eaters, fighting Brexit, and one calling for the UK to “go straight to the heart of capitalism and overthrow it.” How goes the revolution Kate…

Isabel Bull completes the team as Political and Policy Manager. One of Bull’s stronger political convictions is for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Bull lambasted the renewal of Trident, stating: “I think this was not just resolutely awful, but also an unequivocally naïve decision.” No doubt she bonded with her anti-nuclear boss…

SpAds often temper their minister’s more barmy ideas – it looks like there’s no risk of that here…

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?

Committed socialist Starmer has spent the morning suggesting that Lammy and Rayner’s forceful opposition to nuclear deterrence doesn’t matter, because he believes in it and he “leads the party from the front“. His newfound “dedication” to nuclear weapons might ring a little hollow considering his longstanding position in a group promoting total nuclear disarmament…

Starmer joined the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers as secretary in late 1988 – he stayed in post for a full twenty years and only left to take up the DPP job. In autumn of 1989, the society issued some robust resolutions in issue No 9 of the Socialist Lawyer publication. In response to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty the group demanded that Britain and “other capitalist countries follow suit by abandoning weapons and strategies of genocide; and urges the Labour Party to adopt a non-nuclear, non-aligned defence policy as the precondition for the preservation and extension of human rights, and the key to victory at the next General Election.” Unilateral disarmament – Jezza must be proud of his successor…

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps tells Guido in response: “Everyone knows Keir Starmer flip flops on all his views, but the fact he can’t be relied on to stand by the UK’s nuclear deterrent and our essential NATO alliance is dangerous for Britain and its allies. This is the man who twice wanted Jeremy Corbyn to be PM. But his lack of credence on defence goes back much further as these revelations show.” What else is socialist Starmer committed to imposing on this “capitalist country”?

Starmer is bigging up Labour’s defence credentials this morning by giving a speech in Manchester surrounded by veteran PPCs, including touting Labour’s plan to build “four nuclear submarines”. Which turn out to be the ones the government has already committed to…

When asked, yet again, by GB News’ Chris Hope if he would push the big red button he finally conceded and said he would go for it: “It’s a vital part of our defence and of course that means, uh, we have to be prepared to use it.” In December he refused to go that far…

Starmer was asked if David Lammy and Angela Rayner, who voted against Trident’s renewal, had changed their minds. He refused say and claimed instead: “I lead this party I’ve changed this party if we’re privileged to come in to serve I will be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom“. So just ignore the views of the Deputy PM and Foreign Secretary then…

Guido isn’t sure if Lammy’s strong faith-based views on deterrence have changed. He wrote in Christian News in 2016:

“The idea of loving thy neighbour and protecting our world for future generations simply cannot hold if we have stockpiles of weapons that will destroy our neighbours and destroy our world for future generations.

Not only do nuclear weapons contradict religious principles, any form of international relations based on the threat of mutual destruction is totally contradictory to the preamble of Article 1 of the United Nations Charter.”

How much time will it take for Rayner and Lammy going to beat Starmer’s newfound nuclear enthusiasm out of him? It didn’t take her long to get him to U-turn on Abbott…

Owen Jones hasn’t stopped producing groundbreaking journalistic output since announcing his new “Vote Against Labour” initiative. His latest piece in The Guardian yesterday argued for cuts to defence spending and scrapping Trident, using such high-grade arguments as: “It is true that Nato membership calls for arms spending of at least 2% of GDP, but in practice most states flout that.” That settles it, then…

Owen included damning final evidence in his polemic:

“As the House of Commons Defence Select Committee concluded: ‘The only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it.’”

The only problem? Jones has misattributed the quote to the Committee as opposed to its actual author, which is Greenpeace, in one evidence session in 2006. The quote does in fact appear as the conclusion of the Defence Committee, though only on a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament leaflet. Judge a journalist by the quality of his sources…

Owen defended himself last night by blaming the error on his teeth: “I had dental surgery this week, which has left me a bit of a groggy mess…Basically I don’t have any wisdom teeth.” Hope he’s got BUPA…

Despite PMQs avoiding the topic, SW1 is abuzz with chatter over The Sun’s revelation that a second Trident missile failed while Grant Shapps was on board the sub in January. Tobias Ellwood has gone further than anyone else in revealing what is known about the test’s failure, telling GB News that he has conducted “investigations” and understands “it was some equipment that was actually attached to the missile itself that prevented the firing of the rocket system“. Details that should be closed…

An MoD source confirms to Guido that “no one has been asked not to talk about the DASO (Demonstration and Shakedown Operation) in general” – implying that they have been told not to talk about specifics. Government sources insist to Guido that the deterrent is effective and all other details, including that of the leak, are “second-rate“, and that Ellwood would likely have heard more details of the test second or third-hand. Meanwhile, a “serious investigation” is being launched over the original leak of the test, starting with a police investigation into who was on the sub at the time of the failed launch. Splashes in the ocean are causing ripples in Westminster…