The Deputy Prime Minister’s allies have blamed a scandal about her tax affairs on misogyny and classism. Fleet Street Fox explains Angela Rayner’s real crime is that she’s just not one of the boys
Let’s get one thing absolutely clear. Angela Rayner probably owns the fewest homes of anyone in Westminster, with the possible exception of the cleaning lady.
She owns ONE flat. Or to be precise, her bank does. To most MPs, the entire arrangement is the kind of thing they’d consider a weekday crashpad in the capital, and a place for the mistress to stay well away from the wife.
Yet the scandal over the stamp duty not paid on that flat means she will forever be known as ‘Three Pads Rayner’, a smear of Labour sleaze, and an example of how disconnected those in government are from ‘real people’, whoever someone decides they may be. That’s why someone’s sprayed ‘TAX EVADER’ in graffiti on her gate, even though that’s not what’s happened.
The PM’s Eton-educated ethics advisor will shortly be making or breaking the political career of a teenaged mum from Stockport, and it’s then we’ll see whether her real crime is that she is simply not one of the boys. That she has more than the regulatory two ear piercings, a tendency to eyebrow-raising shoes, and an impressive ability to show she simply does not give a rat’s ass what the lads think.
SHOCK! She’s a working mum whose children live somewhere else, so they don’t have to change schools. HORROR! She has a long-term, on-off partner who she is not marrying. CRIVENS! She’s tall and chesty and long-haired, which men of a certain age prefer on their barmaids, not on a minister. They would like her far more if she had a sensible bob and the agonised self-loathing of a Mounjaro mummy, who doesn’t dress quite so far to the left.
It’s been said for the entire year Labour’s been in government that there’s a boys’ club in No10. It’s doing so well that they shed staffers like dandruff. they’ve had to reset their reset, and polls show 70% of the country disapproves of the Chief Boy. Yet still, the biggest threat it faces is from a woman with only one flat to her name.
Rayner might not be to everyone’s taste. But what’s clear is that, despite his warm words and Cabinet ministers publicly defending her ‘honest mistake’ over the stamp duty on her flat, she’s not really to Keir Starmer’s taste either. He can say how proud he is of her all he likes – the fact remains, as fluffed up as this scandal is, she makes him look weak, indecisive, and tainted by association.
Maybe the ethics advisor will exonerate her and she’ll live to die another day. Maybe he won’t. She and Keir were elected to their posts by the Labour Party because they were completely different, and in government, she’s a square peg in a round hole, and everyone’s a hammer.
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But Rayner has further problems. She didn’t pay the tax she should have on a property worth 21 times the average salary, the amount unpaid is more than most voters could ever hope to find, and she gets to stay rent-free in two different grace-and-favour properties. She’s come a long way from Stockport, and seeing as the taxman is £40,000 in the hole, it’s a journey that now appears to have made her unreliable at best, and untrustworthy at worst.
It may be admirable that she’s put a property in trust for a disabled child, and that when she has purchased her single property, it’s in Hove where her partner’s children live, so they can all spend time together. But if you’re a voter in Ashton-under-Lyne, you might be wondering how much she cares if her only personal property is 260 miles away.
Her website shows regular constituency meetings and visits, but not quite as many voters will see them as will have seen the news that she spends weekends on the South coast. That physical and financial disconnect from her electorate may cause her more damage at the ballot box than any stamp duty fuss.
What may matter still more is the prospect of having to resign if she is found to have made any errors, if the PM thinks she’s dragging his government down, or if she’s just plain fed up of having her children dragged into fights with the Tories. There is a real prospect that the Labour Party’s elected deputy leader will be sat on the backbenches, while the understudy PM is someone else – a glaring, and noticeable, loss of power for both her, and the membership.
Starmer’s team would seem even more of a boys’ club, and she’d be seen as the centre of every plot and leak. Which will be a bizarre situation, not least because Starmer believes in Labour intellectually, and Rayner feels it in her gut. He cares less than she does, which is why he’ll amputate her if needed, and it’s why she has clawed her way to power and wants to hold on to it despite the graffiti, the attacks, and the abuse.
That’s what being in ‘the boys’ club’ really means. It’s about being “one of us”, thinks the same, dresses the same, works the same. And this club likes the theory of Labour, but has never lived its realities. Rayner probably has those tattooed on her backside, and will happily show you after a couple of pints. Regardless of any ethics investigation, she ought to be reshuffled because her story no longer works for the voters; but she will be reshuffled because she just doesn’t fit. As it is for her, so it shall be for every one of us who twerks to our own tune.