Best Of

The big winners out of today are Yvette Cooper (for the immediate boost) and Shabana Mahmood (for the potential benefit) I think.

Yvette now is in her second great office of state, it’s a “safe” one, it’s moved her on from the potential pitfalls of the Home Office; and she stays at the top of government. If Starmer were to fall under the proverbial bus, she has the profile and the seniority to be in pole position to succeed, I think.

Mahmood could be an even bigger winner, if she is able to present herself as tough on immigration (she is on the right of Labour on this) and if she benefits from any kind of good news on that front she could become a very strong candidate for next leader. She does however have the poison chalice of the Home Office, so any benefit is potential at this stage - if Labour are seen to fail, her chances recede.

Official documents show she has a £650,000 mortgage on the seaside flat through NatWest.

The scale of the loan will have left her with mortgage repayments as high as £4,000 a month while her salary against an income of £5,400 a month after tax. As deputy prime minister she was taking home £8,100.

Following her resignation, she will have just £1,400 a month left over with two teenage children to look after, covering food and clothing bills, gas and electricity, holidays and sundry other costs.

She also has a £40,000 tax bill to pay as well as a likely penalty of £12,000 plus interest on top of about £1,000 – a total bill of £53,000.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/09/05/angela-rayner-may-have-to-sell-hove-flat-after-losing-job/

Shit happens

Your comments of the last few days strongly indicated you'd be delighted to see Rayner humiliated and forced to resign. I'm not quite sure why though I suspect it's to do with what she said about Conservatives while in Opposition.

All of that being said, none of this sits well with me.

Since the Expenses Crisis, successive Governments have imposed levels of probity on Ministers and MPs which are draconian in extremis. As with other Prime Ministers, Starmer wants his Cabinet team to be seen to be beyond reproach when it comes to their personal financial affairs so while we can live with incompetence and stupidity, at least we don't have to live with corruption (apparently).

Rayner has made mistakes and breached the MInisterial Code making her position untenable. Had I done the same, I imagine I'd be looking at having to repay the unpaid Stamp Duty and perhaps a penalty but I wouldn't lose my job over it and this is where I'm uncomfortable with all this and was when it was applied to Conservatives.

We penalise mistakes rather than malevolence. Yes, let's go after Ministers who receive money from third party lobbying companies but this is Rayner's private domestic arrangements. I don't think she should be sacked for what she has done but the Ministerial Code dictates otherwise and them's the rules currently.

For most politicians then most would be a bit fairer but Rayner set herself up as the scourge of those who had made errors whether innocent errors or egregious. If you decide to make yourself the witch finder General make sure you don’t do anything that looks like witchcraft.

She was relentless and unsparing in her calls for resignations and fire aimed at people who structured theor finances tax efficiently. Live by the sword etc.

But let's not pretend this was similar. She didn't structure things tax efficiently. Quite the opposite.

That might be true but like most things now it’s the optics and she failed them. Hopefully it’s a lesson to other politicians to get their shit together or, when people make mistakes for the right reasons, don’t get on a soapbox and demand resignation.

Ok germ of a point there. But this is the way to err if we must err - in favour of high standards and squeaky clean. What we don't want is politicians in opposition going easy on government ethics so as to create space for them to fall short in office in due course. That would foster laxity.

Wow. I mean just fecking wow.

Jeremy Clarkson
@JeremyClarkson
·
6h
We paid for Angela Rayner’s education. We paid her wages when she worked for the local council. We paid her wages when she became an MP. We even paid the settlement that enabled her to buy a house. Tax payers have funded every aspect of her entire life.

https://x.com/JeremyClarkson/status/1963934976417603877


How long before he is a Reform candidate for Deepings in the Rotten Borough?

He could say the same for every career Civil Servant. Is he claiming that she delivered no value in work carried out?

Probably.

It's like how the average person's view of a local government or civil service worker is that they do absolutely nothing of worth and are incompetent as well, plus they are far too many of them and they are vastly overpaid, which, whatever, people can believe that if they like, but they often illustrate it by adding up the entire cost of them as something that could be put elsewhere, as if they literally do nothing.