I feel sad about Angela Rayner

[Neededa]

OK, I am left leaning so maybe I am already biased, BUT, I do feel sad that a woman who overcame early issues, who was “proper” working class, who didn’t speak the kings English, but rather with a proper local dialect, and achieved a high office without a single spoon in her working class mouth, has gone.

i do understand that many people will agree with what has happened. I would have been fuming if the story played out the way it had as a different party, and I understand that Angela had to go, BUT as a woman who believes in holding up other women, particularly those who aren’t born to certain families, or have expectations placed on them from word go, I do feel a bit sad this morning.

There was a working class woman in the House of Commons. A working class woman was the deputy prime minister of this country. It is not even 100 years since working class women could vote. I feel sad.

She promotes high taxation and then goes out of her way to avoid paying more tax. She says she is left wing but then she has multiple homes. It is difficult to respect someone whose principles fly out of the window once it isn’t just other people paying for them.

Not surprised … just another politician dodging taxes and being holier than thou.
she had to go

She's not 'intelligent'.

She has one house?

So you think great parenting involves moving to the other end of the country away from your very disabled child? Oh, but it’s ok because he’s got his own house to live in.

What has she/Labour have achieved exactly for the people of the UK - name one thing. If you are talking about being in a widely despised govt with a historic low polling after only one year, that's not an achievement - IMHO they are costing us millions for making the country worse - an epic FAIL!

I agree with you. Sad but at least she did the correct thing and resigned.

I feel a bit sorry for her because she's a human being who has ended up in a financial mess. Beyond that, no, absolutely no sympathy whatsoever. If it were just this one error then I might feel differently, but it's not, is it? Because there was also all this, in no particular order:

1. The obviously intentional tax dodging she did over the sale of her ex-council house. All the (still working class) neighbours of that address were clear she hardly ever went there. She actually lived less than a mile away with her husband and other children. Yet she claimed it was her primary residence to avoid paying CGT on it.
2. Gross hypocrisy: she would have hounded any Tory who cynically lied to the authorities in order to avoid paying tax, and she also sought to end the right-to-buy scheme, from which she herself had profited. One rule for Ange, and plenty of other rules for everyone else, including the working classes.
3. She tried to blame this on her conveyancing firm, despite the fact that they were quite clear about the fact that they were not solicitors or qualified to advise on tax issues. They told her she should seek qualified legal advice on her specific tax situation, and she didn't. Really unpleasant to try to land this on a small business and be damned to the stress, financial consequences and potential media attention those working for that business might suffer as a result. What a selfish woman.
4. As a PP has pointed out, careful inspection of the government website or a chat with Grok would have told her the correct position regarding tax in her situation. It's not good enough for a government minister who has repeatedly attacked the politicians on the other side of the political divide for attempts to avoid tax to commit actual tax evasion and then think she can get away with it by crying on TV. That doesn't wash for Tories, it doesn't wash for normal members of the public, no way it washes for Ange.
5. She has made much of the fact that this was all about looking after her disabled child. Really? Really? Taking money out of her child's trust to buy her out of her share in the family home so she could move to a luxury flat hundreds of miles away from her disabled child and her constituents? Sorry, but what does any of that have to do with taking care of her disabled child? She used her disabled child as a human controversy shield and it's gross.
6. She and this government have had absolutely no sympathy for the many parents across the country who are genuinely doing absolutely everything they can to 'just look after their children'. The people scrimping and saving and never taking a foreign holiday and certainly not splashing out 800k on luxury homes hundreds of miles away from their kids so that they could send their children, many of them with special needs, to private schools that make education accessible for them. The farmers working 14 hour days every day of the week, usually alongside their kids, and hoping to leave those farms to those children, who have also invested huge amounts of time and work and love in them. No sympathy for these groups at all. Instead, endless yells of 'PAY YOUR TAXES'. No, Ange, you pay YOUR taxes.
7. She has used hideously intemperate language about her opponents in the past, such as the notorious 'Tory Scum' comment. She deserves to be held to the very highest of the standards she's expected of others.

As for your woe about her being a properly working class woman. I'd love to know what you think of Margaret Thatcher and the way people talked about her. Thatcher grew up in a working class household. She and her sister saved their pocket money so they could pay passage for a Jewish teenager who had escaped Nazi Germany to come and live with them. She won a scholarship to a Grammar school and worked her way up, on her own merits, first to Oxford, and then to Westminster. Do you have a feminist interest in Thatcher, or do you revile her as a filthy milk stealing Tory, like so many of the others I've seen sighing over Angela Rayner?

I have to agree, I feel sorry for her - I'm a died in the wool Tory - but running my own business, being a trustee of a complex farm trust, and having done IHT you can very easily get different answers from different professionals. I even got 3 different answers from HMRC once on the same query.

The tax system is devilishly complicated, and many mere mortals don't come close to understanding what's what with trusts etc.

You could say "she should have known", but I wouldn't without my extensive lived experience - how many people just pay the advised figure? and that disclaimer from her solicitors, they all do that, as do accountants, because its the taxpayer who ultimately reports to HMRC.

I'll be honest, I dislike the woman, but still think this is all a bit unfair.

I'm sad, and also frustrated that the Labour Party can't support its generals better. It needs to be more proactive - tough for an organisation that prides itself on its Heath-Robinson design held together by gaffer tape and spittle its democratic processes and values.

Very senior politicians are usually very able - but prioritise their work over their private business, stint on sleep, etc. This is admirable but can also be a problem.

All human beings fail to see the blindingly obvious at some point, without exception - no matter how able, moral or politically-astute.

The party needs to think of its senior figures as predictably needing access to high-quality financial and legal advice, and emotional support, when going through major stressors. Senior political careers being derailed by property transactions has come up before (e.g. Peter Mandelson in the 1990s).

Getting this set up is probably a job for the party chair - who happens to be a lawyer. The party should get a reputable firm to agree a fair rate, and ensure the senior figures know they are expected to use them as the default option.

This. She tried to blame her conveyancers - who then issued a statement saying they don't deal with trusts or offer tax advice and acted on the information provided to them by Rayner. She didn't care about the potential damage she could have caused her conveyancers. No sympathy for her at all.

I also feel sad, but for different reasons.

I’ve never voted Labour personally and I’m not a huge fan of the current government. BUT I watched an interview with Angela a few months ago and really liked her. I was impressed at the path she had taken, the hard work, her down to earth attitude and the fact that being a woman would have made that path all that much harder.

I felt like she was someone I could actually get behind and believe in. I was beginning to see the Labour Party in a different way- with women like Angela and Jess Phillips involved maybe there was hope for the country at last!!

Now I’m just sad- once again a politician doing something they shouldn’t, making an excuse and getting caught out. The country deserves better- WE deserve better.

Yes, who do we know who is in power and could lead calls to simplify tax (but us more interested in making it complicated to hide their appropriation of other people's hard earned money to waste ) eh?

I feel sad and furious at the same time that it’s ended this way. However I think it’s entirely her fault. There was nothing complicated in her case. A simple google gave me the answer and I managed to decode it and Im a woman as well.
I also have disabled child so when I heard where she bought a new flat I was very surprised as I couldn’t see how the location would help her involvement in a child’s life. I can’t imagine any of my friends with disabled children buying a house so far away from where child lives.
So there is no particular war against her in this case she brought it on her completely herself.
And as a Labour supporter I’m furious that her actions will cost party votes at the next election..
And to add I really liked and respected her until now.

I agree. I feel really sad.

Also in the news Nigel Farage avoids tax in a legal manner by getting paid through a company and buying a house in his partner’s name. He gets almost no criticism and it will hurt his career not a jot. People apparently think Farage is working class because he likes to drink beer when in fact he is a public school educated former city trader.

It’s all about perception and not about the facts. Angela just did not play the PR game well and had a target on her back from the right wing media. I hope she can still play a role in public life as we need actual representative real people in politics.

That is an EPIC post @RoseAndGeranium sums it up perfectly.

I think she has been stupid to not get it looked over by tax expert as she was advised to do by the lawyers but I think RR lying on her CV is worse and yet she is getting away with that. Bizarre.

Do you mind me asking how you would class yourself? I am working class..I don’t care for the constant class reference tbh but I grew up on a council estate etc.

I grew up in a council house with a single mother on benefits and I’ve never been fond of AR. If she’s wealthy enough to own multiple homes she’s wealthy enough to pay for proper tax advice. I’m glad she’s gone although I think KS should have sacked her, letting her resign makes him look weak.

I’m disappointed that she’s been replaced by DL, what was KS thinking with that appointment? I almost got my hopes up that it might be WS.

Have you checked how many current MPs actually went to Eton? Or any other independent school for that matter? Have a read of this which has details from Starmer’s 2024 government - 63% of that government attended state secondary (comprehensive) schools.

All the “she was given bad/wrong advice”

No, she wasn’t. Her conveyancers - whose specialism is purely in land law and transferring titles - told her they couldn’t provide tax advice and that she should get her own. She chose not to.

KS has always been weak. He didn’t want to fire his favourite

I agree with all you have said and think it’s a shame. It’s a shame she let herself down in this way. She was told to get expert advice and didn’t, probably because she thought she’d be £40k better off by not digging further. Someone in her position had no excuse not to get the proper advice.

After all her hard work it’s very disappointing that it’s ended this way… but she is to blame.

Thatcher destroyed this country.

@BoudiccaRuled agree.

No one thinks Farage is working class but he is a master at engaging with normal people unlike robot Starmer who would never put himself in the position of talking to the public in person as he has zero social skills. Tax avoidance is legal and any sensible person does it (eg buying ISAs) especially given how they waste our money. Tax evasionis illegal and a normal person evading stamp duty would likely be prosecuted - ignorance is no defence in tax matters.