...to think Angela Rayner needs to wind her neck in?

The issue for Labour and Raynor is that if you want to increase spending but aren’t willing to pay tax then you are a hypocrite especially if you increase tax for everyone else.

Louise Haigh is another one who needs to wind her neck in. Fraud is not a good look for politicians and denying it and saying she didn’t know what she was doing when she pleaded guilty doesn’t inspire confidence in her critical thinking facilities.

Labour needs a leadership competition like we need a hole in our head. Incremental change is better than No government.

Thanks to Catherine West we will have Farage as PM next election talk about shooting the party in the foot and ineptness. I hope she is happy now

I’ll try that one the next time I buy a house “The issue of my stamp duty is not a big deal”

I agree.

To even get selected as a candidate is a hell of an achievement for a working class woman who left school at 16 and was a single parent not long afterwards. And that makes a lot of men in politics feel threatened.

And the issue with the stamp duty on her home isn't a big deal imo and I'm mystified as to why whoever did her conveyancing didn't check it out properly.

I was always under the impression that a property held in trust for another person (which hers is) doesn't count as yours. It certainly doesn't when it comes to means-tested benefits, and I don't get why stamp duty treats it any differently. If I had a disabled child whose home I wanted to protect, I'd probably do the same.

The £30k underpayment is small change compared to the amount of inheritance tax rich people avoid by putting their estates into family trusts, like the Drax family, who are estimated to own land worth £150m before you even start looking at other assets. I don't recall anyone kicking off about that when Richard Drax was an MP.

I have no interest in being charming or sexist. I just objectively observed what she did, which was use political funds for a glamour photo shoot. Not something you would normally associate with a professional female career politician.

The vast majority of people have no understanding of the complexities of setting up a trust for a vulnerable person on the divorce of their parents. Parents are advised to consult experts who also have no experience in this regard because this is not the usual client group.

I think that AR acted on what she believed to be good advice in the best interests of her child and was not motivated by personal gain.

Despite this she took it on the chin awaiting HMCR investigation. If she is cleared of wrongdoing she is exonerated and has behaved ethically. There is no reason why she should not proceed in her political career.

Anything to say on this charming post @EasternStandard or @TheNuthatch ? I'm the sexist one on this thread am I? It's my comments that make it hard for women to succeed? Ok then.

She is neither. She doesn’t have your sort of education, but she went to college part time while caring for a young child. Have you heard her in the HOC? The last thing she is is inarticulate. Maybe try to listen past her accent.

Exactly. She was perfectly suited to being your typical, ignorant, union rabble rouser. But representing the UK on a global scale, mixing with highly educated heads of state? God, no.

Let's not pretend that AR got to where she is because of her finely tuned intellect and dazzling political acumen. She has been promoted far, far beyond her abilities purely because she was a poster girl for the rabid, far left unionists. That is all.

I vaguely recall she used government funds to pay for a 'glamour' photo shoot, didn't she? I can't say I'm remotely surprised.

Incidentally, @Arraminta-I assume you are not the same poster as a much more thoughtful and polite one with a practically identical name? I would hate there to be any confusion….

Starmer has convinced me of no such thing - I don't believe he has said anything about Rayner as PM and the likelihood of a Reform government. I think I've already said it, but to be clear, I believe any change of leadership would be disastrous for the party and the country. I think Rayner is capable of being a good PM but I do believe that would have to come after Labour have proved themselves capable of bettering the country and winning another election - obviously that's not where we are now.

And you're misrepresenting what I said. We can have two female leaders, but not just for the sake of it. Margaret Thatcher did nothing for women's rights that wasn't a backward step. Teresa May was put in to do an impossible job that no man in her party wanted and then bullied out by men. That did nothing for women. Liz Truss....well...

Angela Rayner I believe is more capable and inspirational than all of them put together (though her opportunism this week has dented my approval of her somewhat) but the way the press have treated KS would pale into insignificance if she were to be PM. Until the country is in a much stronger place and Labour can point to achievements that have made people's lives better, and people can feel that in their hearts and wallets, we cannot afford the risk. Same goes for pretty much any would-be leader I can think of at the moment, male or female.

She may well end up as PM, for about 5 minutes. Until the next GE basically. Professional, intelligent people don’t call their colleagues ‘scum’. That says more about her than any amount of tax dodges.

So Starmer has convinced you that Rayner is a risk due to Reform? And we can’t have two women leaders, tokenism seems very dismissive btw. It would be a big achievement.

His approval rating was 11% and that was before Mandelson / Epstein affair. Why can’t she do better than that?

She may well end up as PM, for about 5 minutes. Until the next GE basically. Professional, intelligent people don’t call their colleagues ‘scum’. That says more about her than any amount of tax dodges.

Rubbish. I've said multiple times that KS will have to go if it is revealed he knew more than he is currently saying. In the short term it may feel good to say women got him to resign and that shows female power etc, but if the long term result of that is an early general election and a Reform or Tory/Reform government, it absolutely will not have been worth it. That might well be the case if it turns out KS has lied and has to go next month or whenever, but there will be no choice at that point and personally I'll never forgive him. But we aren't there yet and I do have hope that we won't be.

You can bang on about me wanting to silence women all you like, but it's just tokenism, and dangerous, to have two women leaders or KB and Andy Burnham or whatever, if the result is NF as PM, or anywhere nearer the levers of power than he is now.

Rubbish. I've said multiple times that KS will have to go if it is revealed he knew more than he is currently saying. In the short term it may feel good to say women got him to resign and that shows female power etc, but if the long term result of that is an early general election and a Reform or Tory/Reform government, it absolutely will not have been worth it. That might well be the case if it turns out KS has lied and has to go next month or whenever, but there will be no choice at that point and personally I'll never forgive him. But we aren't there yet and I do have hope that we won't be.

You can bang on about me wanting to silence women all you like, but it's just tokenism, and dangerous, to have two women leaders or KB and Andy Burnham or whatever, if the result is NF as PM, or anywhere nearer the levers of power than he is now.

@baroqueandblue You need a basic lesson in economics in order to understand growth, taxation and spending.

AR simply doesn’t have the depth of understanding required on many fronts. Commons performance and political posturing is not the same. This all went wrong with Johnson. Style over substance and now we might get it again. She’s not good enough to lead the Uk because she’s just a politician. We need more. Who? No idea because we have poor MPs. They are not good enough to see beyond partisan politics and simply are not able to see the bigger picture let alone have workable solutions.

Continuing to over tax and not support business leads to redundancies and no growth. Growth gives us money to spend on what we want. Rayner is about punishing better off people who then simply batten down the hatches. Grads cannot get jobs and we see a stagnant economy. We need the right decisions to promote growth.