Almost 80 MPs have called for Starmer to Resign. Streeting making his move before Burnham has a chance to get in. Leadership election between Starmer, Streeting & Rayner, & a few MPs looking to make a name. Official Tue 12th?

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

Link to spreadsheet of Labour MPS calling for resignation - https://x.com/GuidoFawkes/status/2053925699824574889

Streeting has to make his move now, Starmer will never be this weak and he has the chance to go now.

Burnham might be more likely to win, but he is not in, and where exactly is a safe seat by election they could parachute him in for? (nowhere)

So - Streeting will never have a better chance of being PM, he pulls the trigger NOW or he never pulls it at all.

I did say on Thursday that I thought it would be Friday or Monday.... Tuesday is a pretty good guess.

This is a quiet Bat People moment... That Speech... not worth remembering...

Net zero makes sense if manage to bring down our use of energy.

What we do is import the same fossil fuel from Norway instead of producing it, at the cost of job losses and diminished tax revenues.

Net zero would be wonderful if it worked. The way it’s being pushed by Miliband it doesn’t make sense.

What uncanny timing in fact. how did that happen?

To be fair to her, I really can’t see what she did wrong.

Edit: She didn’t intentionally mislead HMRC or intentionally set out to pay the wrong tax rate. It seems like she got wrong advice, which led to her paying the wrong tax rate. By paying the correct tax rate, she has rectified the situation now. I am not her biggest fan, and I am not trying to defend her. I am just saying it looks to me like she made an honest mistake and she has now sorted it out.

Apologies, I hadn’t realised that.

If anyone gets wrong advice, I would expect the person to be suing the law firm or for the firm to be issuing a major apology.

These things aren’t happening. In fact quite the opposite.

Maybe she didn’t want to sue the law firm because she didn’t want to draw attention to the situation and distract from what the government was doing. I don’t know. Only she can answer that question.

The principle of Net Zero is great. I fully support it. What I do not support is how it has been done, which does not reduce the carbon output, and has hobbled the country.

Build LOADS more nuclear powersations build LOADS more wind turbines. Build LOADS of the new sand batteries that store the power until we need it.

Don;t destroy what little industry we had left. Oh, too late.

My understanding, admittedly based on Dan Neidle, is that she was advised by 2 separate lawyers to seek specialist tax advice not just generic guidance as her situation was complex.

She didn't and just paid the standard Stamp Duty, thereby ignoring the possibility she might have to pay more.

Given she was housing sec at the time and had previously raked over others for tax and expenses issues.... it still doesn't look great. Plus I believe the Laurie Magnus finding that she broke the ministerial code stands.

One of the key issues for me is that the whole debacle has highlighted how chaotic her personal life must be to have led to this happening, regardless of the underlying reason(s). In my view, she's most certainly unfit for office based on this alone.

@JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff, this is my understanding also. Her accountant explicitly told her to seek specialist advice. She explicitly chose not to. Or she didn’t read the advisory correspondence from her accountant in detail.

We have complex tax affairs because of the nature of our partnership. We pay accountants and advisers in order to get things right. We don’t want to overpay and understand the seriousness of under declaring.

Doesn’t matter how many interviews she gives or how much she may say ‘ it’s all paid now , move along ‘ Angela the tax dodger ‘ will stay with her forever with those who hate labour and don’t like her much. Mud sticks in politics and unless they are completely squeaky clean , it always will. Brutal.

Haha very funny. 🤣

I do think for some people Angela Rayner can do no right. There’s definitely a misogynistic and frankly quite snobbish undertone to some of the criticism she gets. People obsess over her accent, background, how she presents herself etc in a way that male politicians from different class backgrounds rarely experience to the same extent.

I do think Labour politicians are often held to a much higher moral and personal standard than their Tory/Reform counterparts. For Labour such issues become a week-long character discussion, while behaviour from others gets shrugged off as “just politics” or even celebrated as anti-establishment.

I also hope the same people making endless quips about Rayner’s suitability for office have similar concerns about Farage and the questions around the purchase of the house in Clacton and that dodgy £5 million. Funny how “integrity” and “standards in public life” suddenly become less urgent depending on the politician involved.

How? What’s your interpretation of the situation? Are you saying she deliberately set out to pay the wrong tax rate by ignoring the tax advice she got?

In Laurie Magnus’s letter about this, he said

“Ms Rayner deeply regrets the mistake she has made in relation to the underpayment of SDLT
for the purchase of her property in Hove.

On realisation of this error, she has sought quickly to correct the mistake and to refer herself to HMRC in order to ensure that she pays the correct amount.

I have no doubt that she has been motivated in the management of her property and financial arrangements by a desire to act in the best interests of her children, and with the intention to pay all appropriate taxes and fulfil all her legal obligations.”

He believes AR intended to pay all the appropriate taxes, and she has now done this. This makes me think she made a honest mistake.

She was advised more than once to seek specialist advice and she ignored it or didn’t bother to read it. She’s been highly vocal about tax dodging in the past. For me she’s a hypocrite and not fit for public office.

If it were THAT simple, why has it taken 8 MONTHS to sort out?

So a male Labour MP, sat slumped in a dingy, smoking a fag, and then guzzling on a half bottle glass of wine on the beach in the afternoon would not be criticised? Doubt it.

Also, is it wrong to expect our leaders to have a good command of vocabulary in that they know the difference between the adjectives “adverse” and “averse”?

Come on how low should we be expected to
go.

You’ve kind of proved the point though. Criticising a politician for policy, judgement or conduct is fair enough. But with Rayner a lot of the discourse constantly slips into sneering about class, accent, intelligence and “presentation” in a way that absolutely is gendered and class-based.

A male politician photographed smoking and drinking would probably get criticised too. The difference is that with working-class women it often becomes wrapped up in this idea that they’re inherently “common”, unserious or not fit for office.

On the vocabulary point: politicians misspeak all the time. Boris Johnson mangled facts and language constantly and it was brushed off as eccentric genius. Trump can barely string coherent sentences together and supporters call it authenticity. Farage says objectively false things regularly and people shrug. Yet one incorrect word from Rayner becomes evidence she’s intellectually unfit.

@SapphOhNo , everyone knows Trump is intellectually unfit. I criticise all of them. Low bar
all around.

What’s the ‘adverse’ and ‘averse’ thing? I can’t find anything on that online. I know that’s not really the point, but I’m just curious.

I completely agree. Well said.

Well said.

As I mentioned earlier, the conclusions from an official investigation said AR intended to pay all appropriate taxes. She has now done this. None of this suggests tax-dodging to me. I also don’t agree she is a hypocrite.

Personally, I think she doesn’t always behave with dignity (ie when she called the Opposition ‘scum’), but I think she’s still fit for public office and good at her job.

Apologies, I do her a disservice, it was “abstract failure” when she meant “abject failure”.
Televised during the election debates on the BBC.

Sorry Ange!