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
32 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
OK, but "sold a share to" isn't the same as "taken a lump sum from the trust". The whole point in this unhappy tale is to be precise in factual matters, not arm-waving.
In a comments thread on Mr Worstall's blog I explain why I suspect that swapping investable capital for a share in a house might ("might" I say) increase the benefits the poor lad will get when he turns 18.
https://www.timworstall.com/2025/09/well-thats-one-way-to-put-it/#comments
I didn't say she took a lump sum, I said a lump of cash if we're being precise.
Rayner’s litany of excuses (*) :
1. Plays the Disabled Child card
2. A Big Lawyer told me to do it but then ran away
3. Plays the Clinton/Sturgeon Card - I can’t/don't remember details
4. Did I tell you I have a Disabled Child ?
(*) As of 15300hrs 4/9/25..........
And as John Lennon almost sang...
A working class hero is something to be
Just make sure to pay all of your stamp duty
Totally OT, but I'd not realised that U2 missions over the Soviet Union were flown by the RAF. Operation High Wire and Operation Knife Edge.
https://dragonladyhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/project-oldster-the-raf-and-the-u-2-1958-60-for-rafhs-jun21.pdf
Then you might want to look up Operation JIU JITSU, Project ROBIN, the RAF / Kapustin Yar rumours, and Operation HALLMARK
The Tel carries a story about her constituency house being overvalued when it was sold to her son's trust. Happily that means that the ATM - oops, I mean the trust - could pay her enough to give her a 20% deposit on her Hove flat. I suppose it also means that the house will be liable for less CGT when it is revalued in 10 years (if, indeed, that sort of trust is liable to CGT and if the ten year rule applies to it.)
You know, this whole schemozzle suggests to me that she got some pretty expert advice on her finances.
Another stray thought: it seems Rayner's disabled son is 17, so if she had waited less than a year to buy the Hove flat, he would have been 18 so Rayner would not have been deemed an owner (as the trust would not be "on behalf of children under the age of 18"). So she would have avoided all this trouble. (Assuming the trust is only for the disabled son as newspapers suggest.)
Another wrinkle: if she had paid the extra stamp duty, it seems quite likely she could have reclaimed the extra duty once her disabled son reached 18, as it would be equiv to disposing of her first house in less than 3 years enabling the refund (intended for people moving house but buying new one before selling old one). Though this would deffo need expert legal advice, including if this is legally equiv to "sold your previous main home".
As ND said, she should have worked through the HMRC guidance for herself!
Two things:
Firstly - the valuation of the Ashton house seems well dodgy, especially the transaction between Ange (house owner) and Ange (Trustee). The £650k valuation the sale of the 25% produces seems to be exactly the same as the value put on the house in 2023 when 50% of it was placed into the trust for the son. But the 2025 transaction is between two related parties, in fact the same person in Ange's case, just with different hats on. Ergo there should have been an independent valuation of the Ashton house this year, so that a true value of the 25% share could be arrived at. The trustees should have insisted upon it, to safeguard the beneficiaries assets. What are the odds that a Red Book valuation as of Jan 2025 would come out with exactly the same figure as was arrived at 2 years previously?
Secondly, on the 'Ange is a bit thick and its all too complicated' idea, its long been my argument that modern society is getting too complex for a larger and larger proportion of the population, which results in more and more falling through the cracks. Maybe this is just another example of this, albeit rather less sympathetic than the person who ends up homeless on the streets because they failed to deal with some administrative task to the satisfaction of some bureaucratic body.
Nothing wrong with that.
For HMRC, you can nominate any of your residences as your "main residence", as long as it is an actual residence i.e. you do live there some of the time.
For council tax, in general your main residence must be where you spend most of your time.
"modern society is getting too complex for a larger and larger proportion of the population". Excellent insight!
I've just been through a rigmarole with the Nationwide BS. The first human I conversed with, who may well have been in India, was no sodding help at all. The second, a couple of days later, eventually asked me a question which prompted a happy thought which let me solve the problem myself. Bless the young lady for persevering! But really it's preposterous that they run themselves in a way that is too tough for their own employees to fathom, and which this customer would not have fathomed unless he was having a brighter-than-usual day.
Sobers> valuation of the Ashton house ... there should have been an independent valuation of the Ashton house (2023 to 2025)
To be fair, average Manchester house prices (nominal) in 2025 seem to have been very similar to 2023 - perhaps £20k increase. So looks like a revaluation could well give the same price, or a little more which would mean Rayner would have maybe got £10k more for her 25% of an above average value house. So not getting a revaluation would likely be to Rayner's financial disadvantage. Though given her political exposure it would have been the wise thing to do.
See the Manchester house prices (nominal) chart half way down this page:
https://www.plumplot.co.uk/Manchester-house-prices.html
Without knowing the postcode, hard to say the value.
It's in Ashton-under-Lyne, an area I know pretty well, and some sections of it are nice, and some not, with the price difference between similar houses in different areas according to said area. You can get some cheap deals near Clayton if you don't mind the feral kids, burglars, and dealers, for example.
Goodbye Angie, you must leave us
Though it breaks your heart to go
Something tells you you are needed
At the front to fight for mo'
See, the Jezza troops are marching
And you can no longer stay
Hark! you hear the bugle calling, goodbye Angie Ray'.
The HMRC guidance im this case is inadequate. You have to look at the act itself. If she had had the trust amended to provide a lifelong right to live there then the amount paid would have been correct.
Al
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