ANGELA RAYNER is a tax-dodging hypocrite.
I know it. She knows it. And now the British people know it too, after her teary-eyed, toe-curling confession in a TV interview that she avoided paying £40,000 in stamp duty on the purchase of her swish new £800,000 seaside flat.
The British people now know Angela Rayner is a tax-dodging hypocritePA
Rayner made her teary-eyed, toe-curling confession in a TV interviewSky News
That was a bad enough revelation after the Deputy Prime Minister had spent a whole WEEK denying any wrongdoing before insisting it was all an honest mistake, guv, and reporting herself to the Government’s independent ethics adviser and to the taxman.
But now we also know something far worse: That the Deputy PM is a woman with no shame.
Not only did she betray taxpayers, she was also willing to betray her working-class background and her sex and — worst of all — to use her own children as a human shield in a bid to keep her job.
Let’s start with her betrayal of taxpayers.
This, after all, is a politician who said in Opposition that working people “just want tax avoiders to pay their fair share of tax”.
Yet, here that very same politician is, just a few years later, sitting in Government and desperately trying to justify not paying her own fair share of tax.
Bare-faced cheek
She rails against the rich yet this “woman of the people”, this working-class Boadicea, has been busy paying “wealth consultants” to set up a family trust to avoid paying inheritance tax, and lawyers to dodge the due tax on her home purchase.
Of course, it’s perfectly legal to AVOID paying tax (as anyone who buys duty-free booze or perfume at the airport does) but when does sensible tax planning become aggressive tax avoidance and when does it become tax evasion — a criminal offence?
And, anyway, is it appropriate for a Government minister to seek to minimise her tax bill in a way that is out of reach for most ordinary families?
Whatever the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, concludes, we already know that Angela Rayner is guilty of blatant hypocrisy.
For years she happily played the role of Labour attack dog whenever any Tory minister got into trouble with his finances, demanding their immediate resignation or sacking, whether it be Rishi Sunak for his wife’s non-dom tax status, Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs over the sale of his company or Boris Johnson’s undeclared donations from party donors to fund his lifestyle.
All of them were judged by Rayner to be unfit for public office.
But not her. No, now she insists we wait for an independent investigation to conclude, and claims she shouldn’t be punished for an honest mistake.
According to Rayner, there shouldn’t be one rule for us and one rule for them — unless she’s one of the “us”, in which case it’s just fine.
Then there’s the question of class.
Rayner’s allies have made the extraordinary claim that her critics just hate a working-class woman made good.
For Rayner and her supporters, being working class is a Get Out Of Jail Free card for any politician caught out in any dodgy tax affairs, while TUC leader Paul Novak insisted she is the victim of “misogyny”.
So are we now supposed to hold Government ministers from working-class backgrounds to lower ethical standards than their middle-class colleagues?
PAWe might ask why Rayner, the Housing Secretary, did not know how much tax she should pay on her home purchase[/caption]
GettyRayner is now one of those rich people she claims to despise so much, swanning around in a chauffeur-driven car[/caption]
And hold women to lower standards than men?
Poor little working-class Angie — how could she POSSIBLY be expected to understand complicated tax affairs, eh?
How patronising! How insulting! And not just to Rayner but to every proud working-class man or woman in the country who’s strived to get ahead in life.
We should all be proud that someone who was raised on a council estate, was a full-time carer for her mum and became a single mum herself at just 16 can, through her own hard work and determination, rise to become Deputy Prime Minister of this country.
All credit to her.
But how embarrassing for Rayner to still be playing the victim card when she earns £161,000 a year, lives in a grace-and-favour Westminster apartment and swans around in a chauffeur-driven car.
I hate to break it to you, Ange, but you’re now one of those rich people you claim to despise so much.
That didn’t stop her self-pitying mea culpa in her soft-soap interview with Sky News on Wednesday that more closely resembled a bubble bath than an interrogation.
The ultimate betrayal that Rayner has committed is to her own children.
Julia Hartley-Brewer
Close to tears, a contrite and softly spoken Rayner finally came clean on her tax affairs, explaining that she had indeed paid £40,000 less tax on the purchase of her Hove apartment than was legally due — but only because she had been given the wrong legal advice.
The solicitors involved have since claimed they offered NO advice on her tax status.
Why a woman who had already faced numerous questions about the tax paid on her purchase of her council house many years ago, and who had only recently paid wealth advisers to set up a trust for her children, was unable to get accurate tax advice, is a complete mystery.
We might also ask why she, as Housing Secretary — the minister in charge of the department which DOUBLED stamp duty for second home buyers — did not know how much tax she should pay on her home purchase.
She says she consulted three different people about the stamp duty question.
But who were they? Her cleaner, a bloke walking his dog and a woman at the bus stop?
The ultimate betrayal that Rayner has committed is to her own children.
With unimaginable bare-faced cheek, she insisted this week that she had only ever acted in the best interests of her three children and to protect their privacy.
Yet the only person talking about her children was Rayner herself.
Tearful claims
Whether or not she paid the right tax or sought the correct legal advice has got absolutely nothing to do with her being the mother of a teenage son with lifelong disabilities.
In fact, the only information ever made public about her 17-year-old son has been revealed by Rayner herself in interviews or speeches.
We can all sympathise with the difficulties that she has faced in her family life with a severely disabled son born at just 23 weeks, and with the financial complications resulting from divorce.
We may even applaud her decision, taken with her ex-husband, to put their house in a trust to avoid inheritance tax to benefit their son after winning an 11-year battle for compensation from the NHS over his treatment after birth.
But none of that has got ANYTHING to do with whether or not Rayner paid all her due taxes.
That’s a smokescreen cynically deployed by her allies to pretend that this is a cruel attack on the mum of a disabled child rather than the legitimate questioning of an elected politician’s financial affairs.
The Prime Minister’s ethics adviser is expected to report within days on whether the ministerial code was broken by Rayner but, for all the tearful claims about class snobbery, sexism, complicated family trusts and everything else, there are really only two outcomes.
Either Rayner deliberately tried to dodge the full tax she was due to pay on her Hove flat — in which case she would clearly have to resign as Deputy PM.
Or she failed to seek out the correct legal and tax advice for her complicated circumstances — in which case she is incompetent and should also resign from her job.
She and her supporters can blame lawyers, the media, snobbery and sexism as much as they want for the mess she is in, but the truth is working-class warrior Angela has no one to blame but herself.
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