Angela Raynor being talked about as possible leader? Surely not.

[Ozgirl76]

I get the point of Raynor - she’s the modern Prescott, the “Everyman”, the one who the trad Labour voters might identify with, with the vaping, clubbing and tax evasion.

But as a leader on the world stage? Have we learnt nothing from Boris? Having a deeply unserious leader is surely not what the U.K. needs now, in this time of global turmoil?

Honestly if she becomes leader the U.K. will be an absolute laughing stock.

Yes, bit sad. He seems yo have more gravitas than the rest of them..

I think the analogy with Prescott was spot on.
I want my prime minister to be clever, articulate and educated. Raynor is none of those and would be a disaster and make the UK a laughing stock.

I have been a labour voter all my life voted since 1979 except once, Corbyn. Raynor would be the end for me.

According to MN her Northerners makes her seem "common and unintelligent"

It's not being northern which makes her appear that way, @LancashireButterPie, or even being working class, a woman and a single parent

It's her own behaviour choices, and IME they're certainly not the choices of most who fit these descriptions, nor would most try to present them as some kind of badge of honour

As a working class Northern woman I imagine the objection is that she is a bit of a conwoman and tax evader! I take exception to the fact we should let her get away with shit actions just because she’s northern and female.

Rayner looks fantastic on paper and I certainly admire the way she dragged herself out of shit street. She should be the perfect leader but her stint as Deputy has shown that she's simply too divisive. Starmzy should have gone for Cooper as deputy.

I do think she's incredibly valuable to Labour though. She is in touch with the common man. She is the common man. I'd put her in charge of Health and Social Care and she'd likely do a bloody good job.

Until she's repaid tax money she's a non starter.

Apparently HMRC haven't yet sent her a demand for the additional Stamp duty, its not beyond the realms of possibility she doesn't owe anything....

....given that HMRC have lost the repayment details of over £13 billion of student debt/loans...

They work very slowly and it's incredibly frustrating to deal with them.

Something Angela will now be only too aware of.

Yes, I filled in the online form just to pay about £3 of dividends tax and it took about 8 months to appear on my online account. I thought maybe I had filled it in wrong or they hadn't received the online form. It had said I should hear about the tax code change in about 4 weeks

Another public service wrecked... i used to be self employed and it was never like this, people would answer the phone, changes happened quickly...

Now i'm owed tax from over 2 years ago... and its accumulating.

I think it is a fucking joke when she says 'HMRC have not contacted me yet'. If you so publicly got caught out made a mistake you would do whatever you can to sort it.

FFS last year I was sent a letter from HMRC saying that there had been a miscalculation in my self-declared taxes and they thought I owed more. Okay, so it took me just shy of an hour sitting on call waiting listening to music but i finally got to speak to a RL person (Lovely Scottish chap with an accent that made me melt) and he went through it all with me- discovered that actually they had made a mistake and sorted it there and then before we left the call expressing mutual good wishes to each other.

AR probably has some lackey who can sit on the bleeding phone for her. She'd be sorted before 10 am this coming Monday if she put her mind to it.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Yvette Cooper as a replacement leader. She is sensible, experienced, measured, eloquent, she doesn't draw negative attention to herself, she pays her taxes, isn't petty or spiteful, doesn't practice the politics of envy. And in terms of education - she's comprehensive school, Oxford and Harvard! Very impressive. Just the kind of politician that would make a great Labour leader and quite possibly a great PM.

Yvette Cooper has proved to be entirely useless with no ability to communicate senior roles. Another one who just acts angry when questioned. She is also tainted (as is Ed Balls, her husband) by association with Blair and Brown governments. She is just "there" and still standing, that's as good as the options are for replacing Starmer. I think a general election is required.

Yes some people might remember the Home Information Pack disaster she presided over. Killed the housing market and had to be scrapped in the end apart from the EPC thing. She defended them right up until the point they were scrapped

She’s not good enough. Neither is Wes. It’s a huge job and neither have the gravitas, the nous or the intellect to do it well enough for the country. Where are the Browns, the Darlings, the Robin Cooks, the David Blunketts in this Gvt? They are intellectually thin, the MPs are underwhelming in general. New, a bit dim and are not performing well (eg in committees) apart from those well established like Rachel Maskeall. There is a huge vibe of immaturity in this set in marked contrast to the Blair days and they shouldn’t be learning how to do better whilst they have the responsibility of delivering Gvt. There are an few exceptions eg Shabana Mahmood and Yvette Cooper, but I cannot see anyone else could follow Starmer and still bring in a GE success.

Rayner was parachuted in to a constituency near me to lobby for the local councillor who had been selected to be the MP candidate. That person was terrible, ineffective in post, just not very clever and full of cliched rote. Rayner wouldn’t engage on sex and gender when asked about that and kept falling back onto GTTO. Just appalling.

You were lucky tbh. I’ve had very different & much worse experiences with HMRC where you have to talk to multiple different people across various phone calls & they always promise to phone you back & never do.

Maybe your case was straightforward- lucky you.

I think her situation was probably more complicated than yours so it wouldn't be sorted no matter how long you stayed on the phone.

The Home Information Pack could have been great. Do you think it's better that solicitors can make more money by repeating searches etc that might have been multiple times already and spinning out house purchase times?

Maybe- but as she was the Deputy PM at the time I am sure she had the ability to call in a few actual RL people into her RL office to assist her in dealing with it.

@SurferRona , I agree with a lot of this, but I think the bigger issue isn’t Angela Rayner as a person, but the state of British politics.

It says a lot about the state of the country that we are even discussing her as a potential PM.

That isn’t about class, gender or background. It’s about whether someone has the experience, authority and depth needed to do the job.

The Conservatives collapsed and left behind a broken state. Labour came in promising to fix it, but instead they chose to manage it. What we got was a highly centralised and controlled government, with Starmer centre stage and McSweeney behind the scenes, doing almost everything, and MPs sidelined.

What we need is a government where senior MPs can operate in their own right, but we don’t have that. The PM, shouldn’t have to be everywhere.

And that is why Rayner isn’t the right candidate for PM. Not because of who she is, but because right now any serious government requires a strong and experienced team around the PM and this bunch of MPs is not that.

I don’t know what the answer is. But anyone taking on the role right now will most probably end up in a reset, repeat scenario.

Would that not be abuse of power? Using your position to call in favours.

yes maybe, if you wish. I am sure there are a whole range of ways she could have fixed the situation honourably, rather than just bleating 'They haven't contacted me yet'. Like- um- contacting them. Like the rest of us sad fuckers have to do.

She left the party in disgrace I'm not sure why she or anything around her thinks it's ok to even think about being a leader

Maybe they could have been but they weren’t in practice. Searches often had to be done again anyway. And far from speeding up the process they slowed it down. People stopped putting their houses on the market as there was quite a significant up front cost. This reduced supply and depressed the market having a knock on effect on businesses connected to house buying and selling.

Don't be ridiculous!

There is a distinct possibility HMRC may well say "No money is owed" she hasn't even received a demand to pay yet...

You might like handing over money to HMRC when they haven't even asked for it but most people do not.

@ParmaViolletts Yours is another ridiculous post.....