ANGELA Rayner is certainly a hypocrite – and she could be a liar too.
The deputy PM spent days and days denying that she had underpaid the stamp duty on her Hove flat by a massive £40,000.
AFPAngela Rayner has confirmed she underpaid stamp duty on her new flat[/caption]
Sky NewsThe deputy PM was in tears as she admitted to underpaying by around £40,000[/caption]
AFPThe Prime Minister praised his deputy in the Commons today, saying he was ‘proud to sit alongside’ her[/caption]
Her team said it was all a load of rubbish made up by the hostile press out to get her.
Keir Starmer also leapt to her defence, claiming the bad headlines were the result of a sexist and classist “briefing war” against his No2.
Well turns out it was the Labour politicians running Britain who were talking rubbish.
Angela has finally admitted she failed to pay enough tax, claiming she only clocked her error when getting a new tax adviser in to go through her bank statement.
Brits will – quite rightly – think she is a rank hypocrite.
Remember folks, this is a Labour politician who voted to put up YOUR taxes while she was trying to cut her own tax bill.
Angela spent years attacking the Tories for being corrupt. She was quick to call for former Tory Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi to quit when it turned out he had underpaid his taxes.
But now she has been caught red handed doing the exact same thing she refuses to fall on her sword.
To borrow a phrase Angela herself likes to use – It is one rule for them and one for the rest of us.
There are still questions the deputy PM is refusing to answer: like when she first discovered she had not paid enough tax, and why her team so vehemently denied a story that turned out to be totally true.
I broke the story of her new home in Hove, and in the week and a half that has followed I have been combing through the deputy PM’s interests.
Her team has tried to dodge scrutiny at every turn – not returning calls or fully answering my questions.
Turns out she did have something to hide.
There are also huge questions for the PM to answer.
Keir Starmer’s spokesman is refusing to say when the PM found out Angela owed tax and – crucially – if he knew before he defended her publicly on Tuesday afternoon.
He must come clean and say exactly what he knew when.
It is frankly insulting that the PM accused journalists like me – who were trying to get to the bottom of Rayner’s murky tax affairs – of peddling sexist briefings.
I don’t need any lessons in sexism from the PM.
Us journalists were trying to find out the truth.
Keir should be thanking us – the Treasury will have another £40,000 in the bank after our investigations.
Parliament’s ethics watchdog is now investigating Angela – we await to hear his findings.
But Ms Rayner climbed to the very top of politics by attacking sleaze and promising change.
Now she is mired in her own sleazy tax scandal, many would say Angela should do the right thing – and quit.
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