THERE is nothing so ugly as the vengeful Labour Left in hot pursuit of someone to blame.
Today they are in full cry over the political execution of working-class hero Angela Rayner.
‘Three pads’ cheat Angela Rayner has no one to blame but herself – and no right to sympathy of any kindPA
Simon JonesRayner has not only damaged Sir Keir Starmer’s already discredited regime but brought the PM himself into the firing line[/caption]
GettyRayner knowingly diddled the Treasury out of £40,000 in taxes due in stamp duty on her luxury £800,000 south coast seafront apartment[/caption]
Who can they crucify for assassinating this innocent council-house single mum?
Was it the “Tory scum”? Was it her rivals for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour crown? Or was it Starmer himself?
In the real world, Angela Rayner has no one to blame but herself. She has no right to sympathy of any kind.
The “Three Pads” cheat knowingly diddled the Treasury out of £40,000 in taxes due in stamp duty on her luxury £800,000 south coast seafront apartment.
What’s more, she has spent her political career as a bareknuckle battleaxe loudly calling for Tory heads to roll for the merest whiff of financial skullduggery.
Rayner did not resign for making a genuine mistake.
She was forced out after breaking the stamp duty rules approved by her own Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
She was not misled by bad advice. She knew precisely what she was doing.
And in a desperate attempt to wriggle off the hook, she blamed everyone but herself — including her hapless solicitor.
Anyone who has bought or sold a house knows an estate agent or a solicitor is barred from offering tax or financial advice.
Rayner must have known she was a goner the moment she was pictured sucking at a giant goblet of chilled rosé on the Hove seafront in Sussex.
Desperate attempt
It was thanks to investigations by a free Press — including The Sun — that we discovered she had bought a sumptuous £800,000 apartment with a sea view.
As the trade unions who bankroll Labour like to say, nothing is too good for the working classes.
But leaving Starmer in the lurch, Rayner has not only damaged his already discredited regime but brought the PM himself into the firing line.
Her sacking comes at the worst possible moment for a regime already past its sell-by date.
The Government has been rocked by scandals involving greed and alleged corruption since its first weeks in power.
Starmer himself was forced to pay back large sums of dosh handed out by Labour tycoon Lord Alli for free suits, designer specs and couturier gowns for the PM’s wife, Lady Starmer.
First out was far-left Transport supremo Louise Haigh, who had concealed a criminal conviction for fraud.
Hard on her heels came anti-corruption tsar Tulip Siddiq, now fending off prosecution by Bangladeshi authorities on charges of alleged corruption.
And last month, Rushanara Ali, minister for homelessness and rough sleeping, was dumped after evicting tenants from her privately owned flats to charge higher rents to their successors.
As examples of Labour’s rank hypocrisy, you couldn’t make it up.
Now after more than a week of ducking and diving, the ex-Deputy Prime Minister, ex-deputy Labour leader and ex-Secretary of State for Housing has been exposed as a blatant hypocrite.
Rayner was forced out after breaking the stamp duty rules approved by her own Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local GovernmentSky News
PARayner failed to meet the ‘highest possible standards of proper conduct’, according to Sir Laurie Magnus[/caption]
AFPRayner on the front bench with Starmer and Reeves at PMQs this week[/caption]
In the words of Sir Laurie Magnus, the PM’s independent adviser on ministers’ interests, she failed to meet the “highest possible standards of proper conduct”.
The gobby redhead has paid the price for her own duplicity.
Her exit was not a noble gesture but a self-inflicted act of political suicide.
Yet her departure from this shameless Labour regime does not remove the reputation for greed and hypocrisy which now hangs around Downing Street like a bad smell.
She has left embattled Keir Starmer with an emergency Cabinet reshuffle and elections for a new deputy party leader — all on the eve of Labour’s annual party conference and the challenge of a crisis winter Budget.
Meanwhile, the Government itself is facing an existential crisis as Nigel Farage celebrated a poll lead of ten per cent at a triumphant Reform Party rally in Birmingham last night.
Farage now seems nailed on to lead his fledgling party into power at the next election, putting scores of recently elected Labour MPs on the jobs scrapheap.
Labour, already a warring coalition of left-wing zealots and Blairite leftovers, is split asunder over the fate of a wounded maverick with an axe to grind.
To legions of voters, Rayner epitomises Labour’s grubby maxim: “Do as we say, not as we do.”
Not going quietly
They are furious over illegal migration, the tax raid on pensioners and the explosion of the costly welfare state.
And they are sickened by the sight of innocent men and women harassed or jailed for plain speaking.
Bawdy Angie may be a cheerleader for the socialist Left, but until now she has managed to sail above the troubles of her own party.
Voters admire how she clawed her way out of poverty to the highest reaches of the Labour Party machine.
And having risen so high, the ginger bruiser is not going to go quietly.
Rayner has powerful fans on the Left and among Labour’s trade union paymasters who spawned her political career.
She is close to Jeremy Corbyn, who has just split from Labour to create his own renegade rival outfit which he calls Your Party.
And she is too ambitious to let a little thing like a tax fiddle stop her from causing trouble for Starmer, who she loathes.
As a freelance backbencher with a following, Angie will be a sharp-toothed thorn in the side of the Prime Minister.
And regardless of the undeniable facts, she will be paraded by allies as a martyr, not a grubby tax dodger.
“We were much better off with Angie in the Cabinet p**sing out, than outside p**sing in,” said one Labour moderate last night.
AlamyRayner classified her home in her constituency in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancs, as her main residence in her most recent expenses declaration[/caption]
Ray CollinsMs Rayner moved into Grade 1 listed Admiralty House in December last year[/caption]
GettyAng’s latest property purchase was a luxury three-bedroom flat near Brighton[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
