To think that surely Rayner has to go.

[Blankscreen]

Well well well.

So now it emerges that Rayner rearranged her property affairs and declared to HMRC that her new flat in Brighton is her main residence and saved £40k on the SDLT bill as a result.

She has then apparently declared to the local councils the complete opposite.

I'm sure slimeball Kier will defend and say it was perfectly legal blah blah blah.

Not to mention she has a grace and favour house funded by tax payers in London as her constituency office is so far away. Yet she 'lives' in Brighton - surely she could just commute that distance like may others do every day.

Surely she has to go.

When you read the detail of her statement you can see she clearly made a mistake, had some bad legal advise and has apologised, and is going to pay what is owed. That should be the end of it... but we all know that it will go on until she is hounded out of office. As the phrase goes let "he who is without sin cast the first stone"

If she has legal advice, whether correct or not, surely she can sue them for negligence and they should pay the additional stamp duty? Unless she did not disclose her matters to the legal advisor in full or they put some wishywashy “we are not specialist trust lawyers and suggest you seek specialist advice”.

It's not tax dodging, it's someone getting professional advice on their affairs which turned out to be wrong. She will now pay the money and that should be the end of it.

She's a good MP, they are not all the same.

Or she’s shifting the blame. We dont know the truth - only she does.

And optics DO matter in politics .

One has to wonder whether she gave the lawyers completing the purchase of the Hove property the complete picture regarding the trust on the constituency property.

We shall await a statement from the lawyers representing her. Otherwise, her latest 'claims' will be discounted as spin. Either way, she should be fined an amount at least equal to the amount of tax she has chosen to evade and her financial affairs should be subject to a full independent investigation. Morally, the appropriate outcome would be her resignation.

Yes it’s clearly gone wrong somewhere. Either the professionals were incompetent or they didn’t have all the relevant information. Those seem to be the only 2 options.

I have some sympathy for this. We can all make mistakes, and her doing so doesn’t make her a monster.

But there are (at least) two angles here, one significant, the other much less so.

More significantly, as somebody who railed against tax dodging, AR looks pretty stupid and, more to the point, hypocritical. It puts a bomb under the holier than thou reputation that Labour spent years promoting for itself.

Secondly, it shows up the willingness of MN’s Labour posters to blindly support and deflect on issues they know full well would have been pursued aggressively and vehemently by them were the Tories in office.

Related to the second point, where’s the poster who kept linking to Emma Monk’s blog? That piece of Labour apologism hasn’t aged well.

Shoosmiths are a very good firm of lawyers. Their advice will have been correct on the facts they were given. I’ll wager she didn’t give them the full facts or didn’t use them for all of the advisory work.

We would have no MPs left if every time they made a mistake they did the “moral” thing and resigned... let’s be real here. Also that’s your opinion not everyone will agree that what’s she’s done is immoral.. we still don’t know if this was bad legal advice, carelessness on her part or deliberate.

Maybe. Can't help feeling she should,d have got her tax advice from Conservative Home. Experts.

People would have far more sympathy with her wobbly bottom lip and half arsed mea culpa if she hadn’t called for the resignation of innumerable people for lesser crimes. She’s a massive hypocrite.

It's irrelevant. it's not the first time her actions have been brought into question regarding transparency and in the interest of the public, it should be the last.

I think I would question whether it’s only “expert counsel” who would know about the ownership/stamp duty rules where a trust has been set up for a minor. Perhaps I’m naive but I’d expect a run of the mill property solicitor to know about this or at least ask the questions which would identify whether such a situation existed. Especially for such a high profile client.

You maybe right. I’m no expert here. We just don’t whether it was deliberate. And frankly other politicians have done much worse in my opinion. Her statement seemed genuine to me. Personally I’m in favour of forgiving some mistakes and this is a forgivable one. But that my opinion and I recognise others don’t agree and I’m okay with that.

It worked well for Reeves so it's worth a try. A morally repugnant pair of individuals.

In my opinion, it is relevant. Why should one MP be held to a different standard from another? It seems we do have double standards for our MPs.

How can this government be quite so abysmal when it comes to optics?

I can't see how she survives this. Better to go now and come back quietly later in the parliament.

Exactly

I agree - we have failed to hold Rayner and other members of the Labour party to account time and time again while demanding others act with integrity. This needs to stop now.

Unless I have the wrong end of the stick, and someone please correct me if so, I cannot believe someone with access to what I presume are the best advisors, has made a mistake such as this.

Surely the advisors would check? Double check? Triple check? They surely know that any fuck ups would be a disaster for their client, and the way they are then perceived by the media/public.

Utter madness.

Trusts are an extremely, extremely complex area of law. It is very possible for even an experienced solicitor to make a mistake here, especially if it was a property solicitor who isn't experienced in trusts and the way they interact with tax.

She may have (wittingly or unwittingly) not disclosed the full details of the situation. She also may have been poorly advised. Her statement to the Guardian allows for both possibilities and may have been worded that way while she considers whether to take action against her sols, or because they've agreed to pay out without admitting liability.

I think this both looks bad for her, and that she's being hounded about it because the right wing media hate a working class women who seems to have got above herself.

It's just the double standards and the utter hypocrisy. She has been so vocal about others and their tax affairs screaming for their resignations.

Then when it suits she behaves with abandon to reduce her own tax liability as far as possible and is now pleading ignorance of the situation.

does anyone know how the trust would have had the money to buy her share of it for her to get the cash out of the property?

The Telegraph have a transcript of exactly what she said to Beth Rigby.

Gift link, but if it doesn't work use this one.