The Angela Rayner Stamp Duty thing is manna from Heaven for the floundering, ineffectual Badenoch; and great stuff for Kremlin-watchers as we see Starmer digging mantraps for himself, and Wes Streeting desperately trying to appear compassionately on Rayner's side, even as the whole world knows she's been set up by the Labour faction that is determined Streeting himself will succeed Starmer, possibly even quite soon.
Thus far, the matter has been discussed in rather pedestrian binary terms:
- she's a serial tax-avoider and residence-flipper - and a monstrous hypocrite to boot: or
- her personal affairs & backstory are sad, and legitimately complex (*takes out onion*), and this has led her into an understandable error: but look, she tried to get advice, she's been let down, and it's just all very human.
She wouldn't be alone in this. Some of us are fortunate enough in the education and/or brainpower department to be able to make sense of relatively clear HMRC guidance (and a myriad other potentially overpowering bureaucratic verbiage one might meet in the course of a lifetime, e.g. the reams of forms on probate). But that's just irrelevant for very many folks - however much effort HMRC et al put into wording stuff as clearly as possible - because increasingly few people have any worthwhile level of analytic verbal reasoning.
Of course, the truly troubling bottom line is that this is evidently no bar to reaching some of the highest levels in the land. And as noted before with the ignorant cretins at the top of Reform, this leads to one or both of two dire consequences: (a) very bad decisions by the politicians themselves, and (b) leaving them fully at the mercy of the Civil Service - another source of bad decisions - when their own limited analytic powers are overwhelmed.
In the next day or so we'll look at a politician to which none of the above applies: Darren Jones ...
ND
16 comments:
Is Angie thick? I don't think so but she is a politician. And what does a poltician think when money and taxation comes up 'how can I fiddle the max out of this', not just Angie but all of them. Choose option 1.
So bell up a wealth management firm and they will come up with a cunning plan, with perhaps an option 'see if you can get away with this - its worth X £K, if you're rumbled you get a bit of flak and pay up. But we reckon a smart lawyer will get you past the numpty regulators and you can put the lawyer on expenses'. Worst worst case Angie has to step down, well she's on a loser anyway so what's not to like what with a bit of compo to go with.
As for 'increasingly few people have any worthwhile level of analytic verbal reasoning' that may be true among the Corrie Watchers but lawyers and beancounters? I don't think so. Conspiracy not cock-up. Naah, Angie's not thick but she might play that card.
OTOH, if the Daily Mail are correct (always debateable) there are two levels of council tax levied - on main residences and second homes. Apparently Raynor told Hove Council her flat was a second home, but told HMRC it was her main residence.
Even if she was doing that "on advice", wouldn't that raise any questions to her advisers?
You'd surely ask your advisers if you had any brains/analyticals ?
I remember in 1986, new finance job, came with a cheap mortgage. I had a repayment mortgage at the time, knew little about finance. Guy explained, cheap interest rate (5% was dirt cheap in mid-80s), endowment plan to repay principal. Guy explained endowments to me.
"So there's no guarantee it'll pay off the loan?"
"It's never happened yet"
Twenty years later I was on an "Endowment Review" team, sending out letters explaining the projected shortfall size!
She's a serial offender. Ever opposed to subsidised council house sales to tenants, she nevertheless cashed in on the deal herself. Then with dainty footwork she dodged Capital Gains Tax on the sale of the house leading to - strike a light! - the Starmer Stasi purporting that their investigation had turned up no wrong-doing.
And now she's been caught illegally dodging stamp duty. She's also been using a Trust (or Trusts?) which many Labour people have long argued are immoral tax-dodging devices. She has three "homes" when she's in a govt that objects when people dare to own two.
She excuses herself on the grounds of being "working class". Even that's dubious: apparently her parents spent more time dole-bludging than working which makes her, I suppose, lumpenproletarian rather than proletarian in origin. And, I gather, her claimed years as a "care worker" consisted of a short spell at that job and then a long spell as a trade union official.
She's a nasty fraud through and through. She, her parents, and her poor benighted son will have cost the taxpayers millions over the years, a burden that she doesn't propose to share if she can possibly avoid it.
And now the poor lad's state is publicised in an attempt to garner public sympathy for her. Despicable cow. To use her own language: Labour Scum, Trade Union Scum
As an aside: Starmer's Stasi failed to make the case against her for her dodging CGT and yet the current tax-dodging case was solved pretty quickly by journalists. What sort of state are we in there journalists are better policemen than policemen are?
To be fair, if the journalism had been left to the Guardian and the BBC she'd never have been caught, would she?
According to Guido Fawkes 'The front of the building in which Rayner bought a new flat in Hove has had graffiti sprayed on it. The graffiti reads “b***h” and “tax evader.”'
Oh dear, oh dear: left wing tactics bite her in the bum. A damn nuisance for the neighbours though.
Mind you, if the neighbours are lefties too then that would be all right, wouldn't it?
There are two aspects to this, the first is a divorced mother of a disabled child trying to work through our system. That side of Rayner, I have nothing but sympathy for.
The other aspect is the politician who savagely goes after her opponents should there be the merest whiff of impropriety. That side of her? No sympathy, she has made that particular bed and so gets to lie in it.
dearieme the current tax-dodging case was solved pretty quickly by journalists
I rather suspect it was handed to them on a plate by Mr Streeting's faction: 98% of 2025-vintage journos are unbelievably lazy
Stray thought: if Rayner should die before Reeves abolishes the exemption, she (Rayner) can now leave her new flat to her son, knowing that £175,000 of its value will be exempt from inheritance tax.
Do I really think Sir Cur will solve the problem by having Rayner meet with a nasty accident? You might very well say that, I couldn't possibly comment.
She has taken a lump of cash from the trust that was endowed with compensation money for the NHS "treatment" her child received at birth. Likely the trust paid top dollar for the property rather than the market price. So she has nicked a chunk of compo for herself.
Matt - She has taken a lump of cash from the trust ...
Really? Haven't seen that myself.
Thinking more widely - why do politicians make such an ineffective mess of government? Surely it would be possible to devise policies and processes that had some chance of working - and if they didn't then fix them pdq. The system seems designed for useless squabbling and backbiting dragged out for eternity.
"I rather suspect it was handed to them on a plate by Mr Streeting's faction". I dare say. But then the Stasi was handed the earlier case on a plate and they did nowt useful with it. So the contrast still stands.
The policies with a chance of working are unlikely to pass the "electorate" test.
We get the politicians we deserve.
https://archive.ph/lZdpL
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