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.

See mine.

Saw it. So you now want to put to one side that Rayner has a disabled child because it doesn’t suit you. Tough.

I call it making excuses and hoping people will fall for the sob story

Disgraceful

AR is dishonest and duplicitous. I have not forgotten the council tax debacle she was involved in. She should resign immediately.

It’s a really shitty card to try to play.

Agree 👍

Yep a tax dodge is a dodge no matter what Labour apologists say

Wrong.

Her child being disabled is irrelevant in this case, and is being used as leverage - a really shitty thing to do.

Some wise advice I have been given, and I give out in turn - OWN IT.

And Starmer 😳

A shitty thing she did her utmost to avoid until it became impossible. It was subject to a court injunction until yesterday.

She just needs to own it - people will/will not be more accommodating to her.

But that’s not in her hands.

Yes passive tense is very telling. She’s giving responsibility a body swerve.

Not as funny as what went before it though. Hilarity abounded, parties, supermarket trolleys full of booze, vomit in the hallowed halls of Number 10. Oh, how we laughed.

This reminds me of that time Cherie Blair went on tv crying about something to do with a property she’d bought for her son?!

“ Miss! Miss! That boy over there is doing it too!” Doesn’t matter who else is misbehaving, you still need to take your punishment

Yes, she definitely should be sacked over this. What kind of message does it send out otherwise?

She didn’t need a court injunction. She doesn’t need to talk about her kids personal circumstances.
Getting a court injunction to out that information and use it to get sympathy for what is essentially tax avoidance is a disgrace

That was rather different.

The Blairs had decided to buy two flats in Bristol, where their eldest son Euan started at university this autumn. Busy in her job as a QC, Mrs Blair asked her friend Carole Caplin to check out two flats in a complex in the Clifton area for her.

This is where the problem began. Ms Caplin went to Bristol with her boyfriend, Mr Foster. Although Mrs Blair had never met him, she accepted his offer to help in the negotiations over the purchase of the flats with the property agents. The sale was completed last Friday. But it was not the end of the matter, only the beginning, as details broke of Mr Foster's self-confessed role in securing the flats for the Blairs at a supposedly deep discount to their market price. That might not have been a problem, were it not for the fact that Mr Foster had been jailed on three continents for fraud.

For the non tax people, it’s probably worth explaining that the Trust and Rayner are separate entities, and conflating them is not helpful in understanding what might have gone wrong.

Shoosmiths are very good lawyers. It sounds like they set up, and perhaps even administer, the Trust. That’s for the benefit of the children of Rayner and her ex husband. I am sure that they’ll have boxed that off properly, in accordance with all the necessary requirements.

Rayner, as an individual, has bought a flat in Brighton. That’s not a matter for the Trusts lawyers. It’s a personal matter. She will have engaged a conveyancer, a solicitor or a firm to carry out that transaction. Shoosmiths don’t even do residential conveyancing directly, there’s a separately branded part of the firm for that.

Rayner needed to give the conveyancer the information necessary for the accurate completion of the SDLT return. It’s was not for the Trusts lawyers to do that, or even be involved. They don’t act for her.

Being charitable I suspect that Rayner ‘misunderstood’ the effect of the Trust on her position as an existing property owner, and told the conveyancer she didn’t have another property. Although, for expenses purposes she had told whoever administers parliamentary expenses that she did have another property for council tax purposes…

Yes absolutely disgusting to try and garner sympathy by breaching her dc's privacy and talking about his disability. Yes of course she wants to protect him as do the thousands who had the PIP reforms hanging over their heads.

So she thinks tax loopholes are ok when her party has been trying to reduce payments to disabled people?!

She's made an absolute fool of herself and Starmer, not that he needed any help.

The court injunction was to prevent the media invading her son’s privacy. Since when has a politician not talking about something prevented the media from invading their privacy? Never is the answer.

She had the injunction lifted to use her sons situation as an excuse for tax avoidance

As much as I think this government is full of incompetents who deserve ridicule - led by the Incompetent-in-Chief, Sir Keir Starmer KC 🙄 - I do not think AR deserves being kicked so badly when she’s down.

Figuratively stamping and stamping on politicians for pleasure and to create bogus claims of the assailant’s probity is something the left does. I don’t want to be associated with that.

AR is a loud-mouthed hypocrite, and she’s been shown up. That’s enough for me.

'The court injunction was to prevent the media invading her son’s privacy'

How ironic! Perhaps her ds needs to take out an injunction against his dm to stop her blabbing to the press about his private and confidential medical issues.

Or, as always is it one rule for her and another for everyone else?

She had the injunction lifted to explain the reason for the trust that caused all the problem.