For many of my fellow Conservatives – all five of us – Angela Rayner’s ongoing tax travails have brought a deep sense of satisfaction. Since her election as Labour’s Deputy Leader five years ago, Rayner has been the Tory bête noire – the class enemy writ large, Aneurin Bevan in a power suit, who happily and openly branded her political enemies scum while her colleagues ummed and erred.
Yet there has always been a competing tendency within Tory world – a fascination. For reasons perhaps best left to the comfortable quiet of the therapist’s office, there are many Conservatives who look at Rayner and wonder why she isn’t one of us. Even without her enthusiasm for right-to-buy, her life story could be a triumph of Thatcherite aspiration. To go from leaving school at 16 while pregnant and without qualifications to becoming Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister is no mean feat. For the Tory Anarchist, there is a natural charm about a politician who likes a fag, a drink and a third home.
Nonetheless, one must play the ball, not the woman – or, in this case, the woman must pay the bill. After first insisting she had done nothing wrong, Rayner has yesterday admitted that she had failed to pay enough stamp duty while purchasing a delightful-looking seaside apartment. Rayner says that she was the victim of bad advice; her previous lack of candour about her arrangements was a consequence of a desire to keep her disabled son and ex-husband out of the public eye. She has apologised, promised to pay and referred herself to Sir Laurie Magnus, the adviser on ministerial ethics.
While Labour were in opposition, there was no one more vociferous or vicious in calling for ministers accused of impropriety to resign. When Nadhim Zahawi was in a simple scrape with HMRC back in the day, Rayner was dogged in seeking his scalp. But now the Deputy Prime Minister is determinedly resisting demands that she follows her own advice. By trawling through Rayner’s old comments, the Conservative Research Department has also proved that there is still a little life left in it.
Moreover, Rayner has the housing brief in a government determined to make life more difficult for those wishing to own multiple homes. Whether or not stamp duty is hiked in Rachel Reeves’s Budget – scheduled for November 26, giving here the maximum amount of time to dampen market confidence first – Rayner has already waved through council tax hikes on second homes. If it was proved she was deliberately avoiding tax, she would stand revealed as hoping to escape from the same Labour’s war on wealth under which the rest of the country is, ahem, labouring.
Rayner has said that she has already considered resigning. If she cannot prove that she made a genuine mistake based on duff legal advice and Magnus rules against her, the presumption is that she must go. But her fate ultimately lies in the hands of Keir Starmer. He has so far hugged her close, and for good reason. As Labour’s Deputy Leader, Rayner’s mandate from the party membership is separate to his. Even if he dispatched her to the backbenches, she would remain his internal Number 2. And for that reason, Starmer should hesitate, even if there is no love lost between the pair.
Presumably inspired by my venerable former employers, LabourList have begun running polls of Labour members as to their choice for Starmer’s successor. The frontrunner is Andy Burnham – the prince across the Irwell. But Rayner sits in a very healthy second. Unlike Burnham, she is also an MP, and thus eligible. She has long been Starmer’s conduit to the party’s disgruntled soft Left. Whether making positive noises about wealth taxes or showing her obvious disdain for the two-child benefit cap, Rayner is the prime candidate for Labour MPs fed up with this government’s drift.
Consequently, if Starmer strikes Rayner down, he could make her more powerful than he could possibly imagine – or at least provide her with plenty more free time to whisper sweet nothings into backbench ears. Removing a Labour leader from office is still fiendishly difficult, and unprecedented. A Rayner leadership challenge would require her to garner the support of 20% of the party’s MPs, assuming Starmer hadn’t quit first. Quitting might make her damaged goods. But one suspects Labour members will be inclined to write this off as a nasty Tory smear campaign against her.
Last night, I made a bet with a pair of fellow politicos – that, within a year and a half, Rayner would be Britain’s Prime Minister. Perhaps I am being too bullish about Big Ange. Perhaps my brief career spent largely covering Tory leadership collapses and putsches has blinded me to the reality of Rayner, Starmer and Labour’s positions. Or perhaps, whatever Magnus rules, Rayner will march on.
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