To her most savage critics – from Tories to the far left – she’s “Rotten Rayner”, a tax evader, freeloader and a “low life… on the make”.

To her trade union friends, she’s a victim of misogyny who right-wing politicians are attempting to hound out because she’s working class.

And after her tearful interview on Sky News, even among some of her political opponents there’s a degree of sympathy for Angela Rayner too.

Politics latest: Why the deputy PM nearly resigned

But amid the rancorous debate among MPs about whether she should stay or go, there’s one part of her defence that is attracting scepticism from friends and foes.

That’s her claim that she was initially given duff advice by a solicitor. Really? If she has evidence to substantiate that, she may be in the clear, though there’d no doubt be accusations of an establishment stitch-up.

But if not – and the city grandee who’s the PM’s ethics adviser – the Eton and Oxford-educated baronet Sir Laurie Magnus – rejects her defence, she’ll almost certainly have to go.

And with her resignation – or sacking – would almost certainly go her hopes of succeeding the increasingly unpopular Sir Keir as Labour leader, despite her popularity with the party’s activists.

When she arrived for Prime Minister’s Questions, just half an hour after her bombshell confession, the Labour high command placed a collective arm around her.

Sir Keir Starmer, who told MPs he was proud to sit alongside a deputy PM from a working-class background, put his hand on her left shoulder.

Badenoch misses an open goal…

Lucy Powell, the leader of the Commons, sitting the other side of the beleaguered Ms Rayner, did the same on her right shoulder.

Rachel Reeves, who also knows all about being beleaguered and shedding tears in public, looked across at her and smiled sympathetically.

If Labour feared a brutal PMQs onslaught from Kemi Badenoch, they needn’t have worried. “Why is she still in office?” the Tory leader began. So far, so good.

“If he had a backbone he would sack her,” she said in the second of her six questions. But that was it. “But let us get back to borrowing,” she continued.

Inexplicably, the Tory leader ploughed on with her pre-prepared questions on government borrowing. Labour MPs couldn’t believe their luck. Cue numerous jokes about missed open goals.

After another dud Kemi-Kaze performance at PMQs, some MPs were even speculating that Ms Rayner’s survival prospects – slim, at best – remain better than those of the Tory leader.

…but others go in studs up

But in the cruel world of social media, Ms Rayner was not spared a vicious onslaught from critics from across the political divide. You’d better keep your phone switched off, Angi.

From the spiky shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel, Ms Rayner was “the property tax dodging, freeloading deputy prime minister” who had “finally admitted breaking the law and evading paying taxes owed”.

There was more. “She says that she’s sorry,” said punchy Priti. “But she’s only sorry that she was caught out. Rotten Rayner should go.”

Nadhim Zahawi, who was sacked as Tory chairman in 2023 after an inquiry found he failed to disclose an investigation into his tax affairs, added: “Did you think about my children Angela Rayner?

“Breaks my heart seeing anybody distressed about their children, but the hypocrisy really does hurt.”

But it wasn’t just Tories – who let’s not forget were denounced as “Scum!” by Ms Rayner back in 2021, in what she described as “street language” – who were brutal.

The acerbic George Galloway declared: “She’s a lowlife”. For good measure, he claimed she was “on the make” and on “Supermarket Sweep, piling her trolley full”.

Read more:
Rayner admits she should have paid more stamp duty
Rayner came out fighting in Sky interview
Rayner’s tax affairs statement in full

However, from the trade union movement, which campaigned hard for the DPM’s workers’ rights legislation, there was unequivocal support.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak told Sky News: “Angela Rayner comes under sustained coverage because she’s a working-class woman in a way that frankly Nigel Farage, leading members of the shadow cabinet, never would.

“I think there’s a real heavy dose of misogyny when it comes to Angela.

“I wouldn’t want to see a hounded out of an important role by right wing politicians and the right wing media who frankly can’t handle the fact that a working class woman is our deputy prime minister.”

There was sympathy from one party leader, Sir Ed Davey of the Liberal Democrats, who said that as a parent of a disabled child “I know the thing my wife and I worry most about is our son’s care after we have gone”.

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Shortly after PMQs, opening a Tory debate on, yes, property taxes, shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride opted for ridicule and mockery. “I’m absolutely certain that the deputy prime minister had a good recess,” he began.

“We saw many photographs of her down at the seaside, just off the coast in a rubber dinghy, rather like many of the other photographs over the summer given the reckless policies this government has towards illegal migration.

“She was probably celebrating the acquisition of another property for her property empire, but perhaps also slightly tinged with that nagging doubt as to whether she had indeed paid enough stamp duty.

“Well, we’ll get to the bottom of that in due course.”

Quite so, Mel. We will.

A fight for survival

Let’s also reflect that on Monday Sir Keir Starmer proudly announced: “Phase two of my government starts today.” On Tuesday, he informed MPs, he was “speaking at length” to Ms Rayner. Must have been awkward.

And on Wednesday, the PM had to watch her tearful confession, just minutes before facing MPs in the Commons.

Not a great start to phase two, prime minister. Nor for his embattled and tearful deputy, who’s now fighting for political survival.

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The government minister responsible for housing didn’t pay enough tax on her house.

Sam and Anne let Angela Rayner’s admission sink in on this episode – as they wonder how much government business is on hold as a result.

The independent ethics adviser Laurie Magnus’ view on how she took inaccurate legal advice could be public within days – presumably that means the cabinet reshuffle has to wait until the Deputy Prime Minister knows her fate.

Never mind what else it might mean for the early days of Keir Starmer’s “phase two”.

But, whatever the outcome, is it safer for Starmer to keep Angela Rayner in a job?

China put on a show of military strength and diplomatic pulling power in Beijing this week that should worry us all.

At the heart of it was one all-powerful man.

Xi Jinping is emerging as the emperor of a rising China bent on reshaping the world in its image.

He wears the garb of his communist forebears, but he is much more than just another heir to Chairman Mao.

Xi increasingly has more in common with China’s imperial past.

He has disposed of rivals and term-limit rules, making him potentially ruler for life.

Xi believes it is China’s destiny to return to its rightful place as the centre of the world. A new world order dominated by China is approaching he believes, hastened by the Trump administration’s willingness to dismantle the current Pax Americana and western disarray over Ukraine.

China has a right to assert itself more robustly on the world stage, of course, but it’s the manner of that assertion and the risks of collision with the West that should give cause for concern.

Xi has ruthlessly crushed dissent at home with quasi genocidal repression in Xinjiang, a cultural holocaust in Tibet and brutal suppression of human rights in Hong Kong.

Next in his sights is Taiwan. It is claimed by the Chinese communists as part of their One China project.

That opens up one fault line between Xi’s rising China and Western nations.

China’s more and more open support of Putin’s war in Ukraine is of course another.

Western impotence and failure to bring enough pressure on Russia to end the conflict has allowed it to metastasize into a much bigger one.

Read more from Sky News:
Xi presents his vision of the future
Who is Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong

On one side in the East, authoritarian governments lining up to support Russia. And on the other, democratic countries supporting Ukraine.

This week’s jamboree of autocrats in Beijing seems to have tipped things more in their favour. Good news for regimes using Orwellian surveillance, censorship, and repression to control their people and keep a grip on power.

Bad news for the rest of us who prefer a future organised around democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.

Dictators rejoice. Democrats beware.