Our now former Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner, had a long history of denouncing Conservative politicians for tax avoidance. Yesterday she had to resign for not paying enough Stamp Duty. This was not because she accidentally wrote the wrong figure on the cheque – showing my age, there – it was because she engaged in a complicated tax avoidance scheme uncovered by the Daily Telegraph:
Angela Rayner saved £40,000 in stamp duty on her new seaside flat after telling tax authorities it was her main home, The Telegraph can disclose.
The Deputy Prime Minister is understood to have removed her name from the deeds of her house in Greater Manchester a few weeks before buying an £800,000 seaside flat in Hove, East Sussex.
The changes enabled Ms Rayner to avoid paying £70,000 in stamp duty, which would have been applicable if Hove was her second home. Instead, she is thought to have paid £30,000 in stamp duty, saving her £40,000 in the process.
But she has also told Tameside council in Manchester that her constituency house remains her primary residence and informed Brighton and Hove council that her apartment there was a second home for council tax purposes.
There were some other financial shenanigans to do with a trust fund for her disabled son going on as well, but they are secondary to the main point.
I am always saying “incentives matter”. All human history demonstrates that in the long run, they do. But all human history also demonstrates that in the short run, they frequently don’t. Angela Rayner was a left-wing Housing Minister whose public speeches often denounced other MPs for legally avoiding – let alone illegally evading – tax. One would have thought that she would have foreseen that unfriendly eyes were going to scrutinise her own payment of a property tax, and would have arranged her affairs accordingly.
It’s arrogance- chances are she got away with this sort of thing all through her career and was never pulled up on it, so assumed she’d always be protected by the unions and the media.
Arrogance, yes. Allowed to rise too high by those whose purpose she serves as some sort of unholy fool. And too thick to know that she doesn’t know how things work a those heights..
Because she only has eyes for her. Recent interviews, press statements, excuses have all been about her and her triumph over humble origins.
I can add nothing to the above three comments. So I added it anyway! Daft bint could have been the new Nick Clegg but she threw it all away over 40 grand!
The press generally gave Starmer and his cabinet softball treatment before going into office. The stuff about Rachel Reeves ‘ CV being exaggerated for example I’m sure could have been found out by the media before the 2024 election had the media been inclined to do so. As soon as they’d been in office for a few months and the slightest scrutiny was applied, all the petty scandals started to quickly come out. Starmer and the Arsenal tickets, Reeves’ CV, and now Rayner’s tax dodging.
And David Lammy is deputy PM. One awaits with breathless anticipation the outcome of his towering intellect being applied to the problems of the day. Still, could have been worse, could have been “special” Ed.
NickM writes, “Daft bint could have been the new Nick Clegg but she threw it all away over 40 grand!”
Oh, she’ll be back after a few years. Remember how Peter Mandelson resigned in 1998 over an undeclared loan from a cabinet colleague, came back in 1999 and resigned again in 2001 over accusations that he had abused his position to get Srichand Hinduja a British passport?