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.
Would she perhaps have a life after this disaster, at least for time, writing her memoirs and some bad fiction, doing a column for the Mirror, appearing on chat shows and guest appearances, all of which, SFAICS, makes a few bob if you have the right connections and agent.
She's not off to the poor house and has plenty of connections. She will be fine. Any slight short term discomfort might enable some of her supporters in the party to recognise the impact of shit happening and how that shit hapoening might impact people who don't have connections and fallbacks and that perhaps they might reconsider supporting policies of such a kind.
Confirmed: Douglas Alexander is the new Scotland Secretary.
It is also an incredible comeback. He was in the Cabinet in the last Labour Government and was Scotland Sec under Tony Blair.
Yes that's a real bridge back to those heady days. Oasis reunion and now this.
Loved the 90s.
It was a glorious time. We didn’t realise how unnaturally, and artificially, lucky a time it was. All the way up until 11 September 2001. What followed was 24 years (and counting) of disaster after disaster, financial crisis after financial crisis, and political and economic stagnation.
In the mid to late 1990s we had low energy prices, a post Cold War peace dividend, golden demographics with a very low dependency ratio, affordable but buoyant housing market, naff but energetic popular culture, windfalls from bank demutualisations, a soaring stockmarket, and a string of very good summers peaking in 1995.
The England cricket team was shit though.
There have been worse decades, but much of the nineties felt stagnant, waiting for something to happen. Thatcherism was dead, but the Major years were a grey twilight. In large part that is what New Labour exploited, being young, fresh, and in full technicolour. I bought into it and for the first few years it worked.
Since then we have been sold different snakeoils, from Brexit to Corbyn to Johnson. Now we await Farage's snakeoil. The nineties only look good in retrospect as a positive contrast to what came after. We never learn. Think things can't get worse? They always can.
In retrospect, we haven’t had a prime minister as good as Major since, apart from pre Iraq Blair. Each PM since has been worse than their predecessor.
Shifting David Lammy looks like a mistake, and Yvette Cooper looks like a poor replacement. Cooper has done nothing at the Home Office. Shabana Mahmood as Justice Secretary is moved to Home Secretary just as she was taming the Sentencing Council, which may be a deserved promotion but looks ill-timed.
Tinfoil hat time: was Mandelson, our ambassador to Washington and back in London, envious of Lammy's apparent friendship with the Vice President, and quite likely next President before their next election?
Cooper has done nothing in every post she has held, absolutely amazing that she survives.
Doing something means there's a good chance you will mess something up. I think a lot of ministers and shadow ministers are mostly focused on not doing things and just avoiding trouble, ministers with vision are rare.
Which is a shame, because vision is meant to be one of the key things politicians provide, and the few ones with it are probably ineffective in seeking that vision, or their vision is crap.
Worldwide things have got a lot better for most humans since the nineties. World hunger down 40%, childhood mortality down by 50% and people living in absolute poverty down by 60%.
UK life expectancy is up 4 years from 2001 too, albeit the increase has stalled in recent years.
Confirmed: Douglas Alexander is the new Scotland Secretary.
It is also an incredible comeback. He was in the Cabinet in the last Labour Government and was Scotland Sec under Tony Blair.
Yes that's a real bridge back to those heady days. Oasis reunion and now this.
Loved the 90s.
It was a glorious time. We didn’t realise how unnaturally, and artificially, lucky a time it was. All the way up until 11 September 2001. What followed was 24 years (and counting) of disaster after disaster, financial crisis after financial crisis, and political and economic stagnation.
In the mid to late 1990s we had low energy prices, a post Cold War peace dividend, golden demographics with a very low dependency ratio, affordable but buoyant housing market, naff but energetic popular culture, windfalls from bank demutualisations, a soaring stockmarket, and a string of very good summers peaking in 1995.
The England cricket team was shit though.
There have been worse decades, but much of the nineties felt stagnant, waiting for something to happen. Thatcherism was dead, but the Major years were a grey twilight. In large part that is what New Labour exploited, being young, fresh, and in full technicolour. I bought into it and for the first few years it worked.
Since then we have been sold different snakeoils, from Brexit to Corbyn to Johnson. Now we await Farage's snakeoil. The nineties only look good in retrospect as a positive contrast to what came after. We never learn. Think things can't get worse? They always can.
In retrospect, we haven’t had a prime minister as good as Major since, apart from pre Iraq Blair. Each PM since has been worse than their predecessor.
Sunak was better than Truss, Starmer than Sunak.
Sunak was better than Starmer too
Surak was better than all of them.
I think Sunak would have been a Major like PM if he had his turn in similar economic and social circumstances. Wouldn’t do anything radical but focussed on the bottom line (not Edwina’s) and general sound management but would likewise have been beset by internal party divisions.
He chose to try as PM but he got a horrific set of circumstances so never had a chance with the time he had. Maybe if they had another three years he and Hunt could have done good things but again we will never know.
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.
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.
Shifting David Lammy looks like a mistake, and Yvette Cooper looks like a poor replacement. Cooper has done nothing at the Home Office. Shabana Mahmood as Justice Secretary is moved to Home Secretary just as she was taming the Sentencing Council, which may be a deserved promotion but looks ill-timed.
Tinfoil hat time: was Mandelson, our ambassador to Washington and back in London, envious of Lammy's apparent friendship with the Vice President, and quite likely next President before their next election?
Cooper has done nothing in every post she has held, absolutely amazing that she survives.
Doing something means there's a good chance you will mess something up. I think a lot of ministers and shadow ministers are mostly focused on not doing things and just avoiding trouble, ministers with vision are rare.
Which is a shame, because vision is meant to be one of the key things politicians provide, and the few ones with it are probably ineffective in seeking that vision, or their vision is crap.
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.
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.
I have very little time for any of the indignation surroundimg this story. The Telegraph is literally the butler to vast and properly organised tax evasion.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Always worth having a look / think about who goes missing when such a scandal hits the news.
I think it’s too early to write a definitive view on Starmer. But I will say that he and Sunak share an awful lot of similarities, in that they both have a similar way of not really seeming to have tremendous control over comms/messaging and lurching from relaunch to relaunch.
Of course, Sunak has the excuse that he came into office at the fag end of a (then) 12 year old Tory government, battered by Brexit, Boris and the Truss debacle. Not quite sure what excuse Starmer has.
Confirmed: Douglas Alexander is the new Scotland Secretary.
It is also an incredible comeback. He was in the Cabinet in the last Labour Government and was Scotland Sec under Tony Blair.
Yes that's a real bridge back to those heady days. Oasis reunion and now this.
Loved the 90s.
It was a glorious time. We didn’t realise how unnaturally, and artificially, lucky a time it was. All the way up until 11 September 2001. What followed was 24 years (and counting) of disaster after disaster, financial crisis after financial crisis, and political and economic stagnation.
In the mid to late 1990s we had low energy prices, a post Cold War peace dividend, golden demographics with a very low dependency ratio, affordable but buoyant housing market, naff but energetic popular culture, windfalls from bank demutualisations, a soaring stockmarket, and a string of very good summers peaking in 1995.
The England cricket team was shit though.
There have been worse decades, but much of the nineties felt stagnant, waiting for something to happen. Thatcherism was dead, but the Major years were a grey twilight. In large part that is what New Labour exploited, being young, fresh, and in full technicolour. I bought into it and for the first few years it worked.
Since then we have been sold different snakeoils, from Brexit to Corbyn to Johnson. Now we await Farage's snakeoil. The nineties only look good in retrospect as a positive contrast to what came after. We never learn. Think things can't get worse? They always can.
In retrospect, we haven’t had a prime minister as good as Major since, apart from pre Iraq Blair. Each PM since has been worse than their predecessor.
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.
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.
Do you really think the Tories wouldn’t have demanded she resign regardless ?
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.
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.
Just get a good accountant and make sure when you’re doing anything that could give rise to tax liabilities you have them triple check it for you. Honestly this is a cautionary tale to all cabinet ministers and high-profile politicians, having the benefit of advice you can rely on is worth every penny.
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.
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.
I have very little time for any of the indignation surroundimg this story. The Telegraph is literally the butler to vast and properly organised tax evasion.
Yes, pass the sickbag as far as they and ilk are concerned.
Confirmed: Douglas Alexander is the new Scotland Secretary.
It is also an incredible comeback. He was in the Cabinet in the last Labour Government and was Scotland Sec under Tony Blair.
Yes that's a real bridge back to those heady days. Oasis reunion and now this.
Loved the 90s.
It was a glorious time. We didn’t realise how unnaturally, and artificially, lucky a time it was. All the way up until 11 September 2001. What followed was 24 years (and counting) of disaster after disaster, financial crisis after financial crisis, and political and economic stagnation.
In the mid to late 1990s we had low energy prices, a post Cold War peace dividend, golden demographics with a very low dependency ratio, affordable but buoyant housing market, naff but energetic popular culture, windfalls from bank demutualisations, a soaring stockmarket, and a string of very good summers peaking in 1995.
The England cricket team was shit though.
There have been worse decades, but much of the nineties felt stagnant, waiting for something to happen. Thatcherism was dead, but the Major years were a grey twilight. In large part that is what New Labour exploited, being young, fresh, and in full technicolour. I bought into it and for the first few years it worked.
Since then we have been sold different snakeoils, from Brexit to Corbyn to Johnson. Now we await Farage's snakeoil. The nineties only look good in retrospect as a positive contrast to what came after. We never learn. Think things can't get worse? They always can.
In retrospect, we haven’t had a prime minister as good as Major since, apart from pre Iraq Blair. Each PM since has been worse than their predecessor.
Sunak was better than Truss, Starmer than Sunak.
Sunak was better than Starmer too
Surak was better than all of them.
I think Sunak would have been a Major like PM if he had his turn in similar economic and social circumstances. Wouldn’t do anything radical but focussed on the bottom line (not Edwina’s) and general sound management but would likewise have been beset by internal party divisions.
He chose to try as PM but he got a horrific set of circumstances so never had a chance with the time he had. Maybe if they had another three years he and Hunt could have done good things but again we will never know.
Again, Major came in on the back of anti-poll tax riots, and later had saw Black Wednesday wipe out the government's entire economic policy. It was not clear sailing. Nor am I sure about the veneration of Hunt who, not unlike Osborne, seemed more concerned with salting the earth for Labour than growing the economy.
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.
He's been very much a bogeyman for the anti-Farage elements of the hard-Right. I suppose the idea is that reaching out to Tommy will placate that faction therefore make things easier for Nigel. But I doubt it will work. For those people a Muslim is a Muslim is a Muslim.
Confirmed: Douglas Alexander is the new Scotland Secretary.
It is also an incredible comeback. He was in the Cabinet in the last Labour Government and was Scotland Sec under Tony Blair.
Yes that's a real bridge back to those heady days. Oasis reunion and now this.
Loved the 90s.
It was a glorious time. We didn’t realise how unnaturally, and artificially, lucky a time it was. All the way up until 11 September 2001. What followed was 24 years (and counting) of disaster after disaster, financial crisis after financial crisis, and political and economic stagnation.
In the mid to late 1990s we had low energy prices, a post Cold War peace dividend, golden demographics with a very low dependency ratio, affordable but buoyant housing market, naff but energetic popular culture, windfalls from bank demutualisations, a soaring stockmarket, and a string of very good summers peaking in 1995.
The England cricket team was shit though.
There have been worse decades, but much of the nineties felt stagnant, waiting for something to happen. Thatcherism was dead, but the Major years were a grey twilight. In large part that is what New Labour exploited, being young, fresh, and in full technicolour. I bought into it and for the first few years it worked.
Since then we have been sold different snakeoils, from Brexit to Corbyn to Johnson. Now we await Farage's snakeoil. The nineties only look good in retrospect as a positive contrast to what came after. We never learn. Think things can't get worse? They always can.
In retrospect, we haven’t had a prime minister as good as Major since, apart from pre Iraq Blair. Each PM since has been worse than their predecessor.
Sunak was better than Truss, Starmer than Sunak.
Sunak was better than Starmer too
Surak was better than all of them.
I think Sunak would have been a Major like PM if he had his turn in similar economic and social circumstances. Wouldn’t do anything radical but focussed on the bottom line (not Edwina’s) and general sound management but would likewise have been beset by internal party divisions.
He chose to try as PM but he got a horrific set of circumstances so never had a chance with the time he had. Maybe if they had another three years he and Hunt could have done good things but again we will never know.
Again, Major came in on the back of anti-poll tax riots, and later had saw Black Wednesday wipe out the government's entire economic policy. It was not clear sailing. Nor am I sure about the veneration of Hunt who, not unlike Osborne, seemed more concerned with salting the earth for Labour than growing the economy.
I’m not claiming they were or would have been brilliant but they really did have the most appalling inbox to deal with. I think from a temperament and career background perspective he would be Major like.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Telegraph all celebrating tonight. Pearson is beside herself.
Not surprising as they have it seems knocked the one foe that Farage feared out of the game.
The problem with Reform is it’s a one man band regardless of what Tory has beens defect to them . So if Farage got into any trouble they’d be up shxt creek .
This of course relies on the UK media actually reporting that .
Telegraph all celebrating tonight. Pearson is beside herself.
Not surprising as they have it seems knocked the one foe that Farage feared out of the game.
Yeah - although if they had their ducks in a row they could have got her last month, rather than going all in on the second home stuff that turned out to be wrong. Still the ball rebounded off their arse and into the net and a goal is a goal.
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.
Telegraph all celebrating tonight. Pearson is beside herself.
Not surprising as they have it seems knocked the one foe that Farage feared out of the game.
Yeah - although if they had their ducks in a row they could have got her last month, rather than going all in on the second home stuff that turned out to be wrong. Still the ball rebounded off their arse and into the net and a goal is a goal.
The DT and Daily Mail are a cancer on the UK . Even the Times seems to have taken a turn for the worse .
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.
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.
Comments
Today looks as if choice two has been made.
The effect might to to ensure that the 'Anyone But Reform' movement is strengthened. But Reform can only win if AntiReform is split.
Any slight short term discomfort might enable some of her supporters in the party to recognise the impact of shit happening and how that shit hapoening might impact people who don't have connections and fallbacks and that perhaps they might reconsider supporting policies of such a kind.
Daydreams innit
My cell
Which is a shame, because vision is meant to be one of the key things politicians provide, and the few ones with it are probably ineffective in seeking that vision, or their vision is crap.
... But isn't Zia Yusuf everything Tommy and his Team despise?
He chose to try as PM but he got a horrific set of circumstances so never had a chance with the time he had. Maybe if they had another three years he and Hunt could have done good things but again we will never know.
Of course, Sunak has the excuse that he came into office at the fag end of a (then) 12 year old Tory government, battered by Brexit, Boris and the Truss debacle. Not quite sure what excuse Starmer has.
NEW THREAD
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?
Not surprising as they have it seems knocked the one foe that Farage feared out of the game.
@BristOliver
2-0 to the lettuce
This of course relies on the UK media actually reporting that .
As a supporter of Tommy Robinson and the instigator of the massacre of Beziers might say.
Only fools and horses sums up this lot. Once they start laughing at you......
End of the Trumpista's