April 12, 2024 - 1:15pm
Scandals land very differently depending on whether your party is on the way up or on the way down. Boris Johnson is the supreme example: none of his misdemeanours seemed to matter, until suddenly they did.
The Angela Rayner story fits the pattern. Even as Greater Manchester Police today announces it is opening an investigation into whether the Labour Deputy Leader committed an electoral offence — by allegedly giving a false address as her primary residence on the electoral register — wise heads insist there’s nothing to see.
But since Lord Ashcroft first raised questions about her living arrangements in his new biography Red Queen?, they have only multiplied. Multiple newspapers have found neighbours who contradict Rayner’s account of who was living where and when; historic tweets show Rayner herself calling the house (that she claims not to have lived in) her home.
Her official story, remember, is that she lived in one property for several years while her brother lived with her husband. Yet some commentators insist there’s nothing to see, and offer several possible justifications.
First, just look at the polls. The Conservatives are on track for an electoral pasting — does a little alleged malfeasance against Sir Keir Starmer’s deputy really matter?
Second, the likely tax bill that Rayner might have avoided by giving a wrong address is not all that much — Tax Policy Associates suggests £3,500 is “probably an upper limit”.
Third, there may yet be circumstances in which she didn’t actually owe any taxes — although tax lawyer Dan Neidle has said that Rayner’s initial explanation was “clearly wrong”.
I will defer to the experts on the details of the tax points, and nobody can deny that this storm in a tax return is unlikely to derail Labour’s journey to office, but there is nonetheless a danger for Rayner. As so often in politics, it arises less from the details of the allegations themselves than from the cardinal sin of any public figure: hypocrisy.
Labour’s Deputy Leader has previously been very happy to get on her high horse on the subject of personal taxation. In 2021, she wrote to the chairman of the Conservative Party to demand that Jill Mortimer, then a candidate in the Hartlepool by-election, release her tax return.
That makes it much harder to justify refusing to release her own. Allies such as David Lammy have been reduced to pleading that she should be held to a different standard because Labour is “not yet in government”. Does that mean she will publish them if Labour wins the election?
Johnson again provides an excellent example of the central role of hypocrisy in many political downfalls. Partygate provoked such public outrage precisely because of how sharply it contradicted the then-Prime Minister’s stern instructions to obey lockdown.
By contrast, when both he and Michael Gove were accused during the 2019 leadership contest of having previously taken cocaine, it hurt the latter much more than the former. Little wonder: Johnson has never really struck a pious tone on drugs whereas Gove, as education secretary, had tried to introduce a lifetime ban on teaching for anyone with a drugs offence.
Had Rayner taken a live-and-let-live approach to politics, both her opponents and the public might have been inclined to afford her the same treatment. If she does go down over this — presumably because GMP finds she did register a false address — it won’t be because of the hard facts of the crime or the penalty. It will be because of the gap between her righteous pose as a working-class scourge of Tory “scum” and the grubby image of a tax-dodging, lying landlord.
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SubscribeI quite like Angela Raynor in the sense that she is by politician standards pretty unvarnished. As in that great photo of her smoking a fag out the back of a conference hall, looking more like Denise Royle than a member of the next government.
But politics is now a total, forever war. This is unlikely to bring her down in the short term and it certainly won’t significantly impact Labour’s coming victory. But once in a while these things blow up and take people down. Even if it doesn’t, its another straw added to the camel’s back which will eventually add up to be an unbearable load.
For “unvarnished”, read “uncouth”.
The irony of course is that Starmer can’t stand her and will be glad to get rid, he’ll throw her under the bus when the time comes.
I’m not sure it will bring her down even if found to have infringed multiple rules and regulations. It seems to me that Labour can be as hypocritical as they like (so long as they keep all the victimhood martyrs on board; Tories, of course, are a very different matter, all being ***ists and ***phobics and to blame for all the ills of the world.
Fraud is fraud regardless of the sum involved. “It’s only a small fraud” can be no defence. Anyone who puts this up as a possible defence is an idiot. And if they’re also a qualified lawyer or accountant probably need to be struck off for bringing their profession into disrepute.
None of this is to prejudge the case here. But there clearly is a case to be investigated. And it’s clearly in the public interest to do so. The only impact of the hypocrisy is that it reinforces the public interest. Absence of hypocrisy is no excuse for any crime though.
And whether we might like or dislike Ms Rayner is irrelevant. Ditto her gender and background.
Agree, although proving ‘intent’ will be the test and that’s a high bar in this instance. Tories know that. She knows that too. She won’t be the only person in the country got in a tangle when in a new relationship. It’s probably alot more common than we think. But she’s a politician and needed to expect the scrutiny.
It’s the squalidness of it, in a week where Humza Yousaf’s brother-in-law was charged with abduction and extortion following a violent death, and MPs admitted sending naked pictures of themselves to complete strangers. Politics increasingly appears to be made up of lowlifes, even as politicians legislate to curtail the basic freedoms of the rest of us.
Could it be that power itself doesn’t corrupt, but that it attracts corrupt types?
I’d say the relatively modest pay, and the extent to which MPs and their families are now exposed to online abuse, means politics increasingly mainly attracts narcissists, people without better career options, and those for whom it is only a stepping stone to more lucrative roles.
It might be the privilege of living abroad and not having to deal with the everyday effects of a Labour government (or a British government of any stripe tbh), but I find David Lammy an absolutely hilarious figure.
He absolutely is, as you describe. I can’t listen to anything he says without thinking “fifth-rate local councillor”.
Out of interest did you find Bo Johnson a similarly hilarious figure? Or Mad Liz for that matter? Or may be Lee Anderson?
Just intrigued as to what might prompt the comment you made?
Mr ‘Conservative Home’ trying to justify the line of attack? One suspects he/they may be beginning to recognise this may not have the optics they hope. Even if the Tory press running it large in desperation for the moment it could turn out the public sees it as an attack by the boys of privilege on a working class woman who gets up their nose.
No doubt a few lessons for Rayner here too. Looks like she took insufficient care even if no intent. But Tories should be careful about opening up tax evasion/avoidance stories. They have had, and will have, far more skeletons. Mr ‘Conservative Home’ mentions Lord Ashcroft, but swerves past mentioning how he used Non-Dom status whilst funding the Tories and sitting in the HoL. That because he’s paying for Conservative Home?
The Government’s guide to completing the form to register to vote ends with the warning:
“If you knowingly give false information in your application, you could go to prison for up to 6 months, or be fined. ”
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5bfc10fb40f0b65b14fc6605/Easy-Read-Guide-to-Registering-to-Vote.pdf
Small wonder the police are now investigating.
Hypocrites on tax like the tax-dodging non-dom Lord Ashcroft?