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.

I’m sorry that she has resigned from her post but I don’t think she’s gone. I think she’ll be back in cabinet in a year or so. In the meantime, I hope she has a chance to recover and refresh while being less under the spotlight.

I work in a sector where we advise clients to take specialist tax advice. They rarely do.

Quite right, this is MUMS-net, and we should be giving here our full support. She has been forced to go public with the complex financial arrangements that they have made to ensure that their severely disabled child is provided for in the future.
That a working-class, northern, WOMAN, who grew up in a council-house, has reached the top of government is something to be celebrated. The millionaires and Eton Old-Boys-Club, who run the conservative party, can't stand it. That is why she has constantly been the victim of smear-campaigns, and now this appalling witch-hunt.
An earlier poster said "She wears her upbringing like a badge of honour" Wrong! it is forced on her, as every time she speaks in the Commons, she gets snyde, sneering comments about "Council Houses" from the other side.
Even more appalling is being forced to resign over tax issues, by the tories; the Party of Tax Avoidance!
Even worse, she was the Housing Minister, at a time of housing crisis; a crisis created by conservative policies!

I’m sorry to hear about the consequences, which I didn’t know about. No MP should ever face threats or abuse for their work.

https://youtube.com/shorts/M2HoPkm1ouQ?si=tMUmwoOMuLGVg3_g

Another way of summarising the situation.

Exactly if it was a Tory doing that she would have wanted immediate resignation and called them scum amongst other things. I am sorry that she has a disabled son but she has used his trust money to partionally fund her house purchase, not sure how that sits morally.

But she did, because the the media had already identified her. It’s not fair to try and defect the blame for Rayners mess onto a small band of conveyancers who had no alternative than to protect their reputation from a woman who would say anything to deflect the blame.

She wasn’t forced to go public with those complexe personal and financial arrangements. She chose to because she though it’d save her skin.

Why are you feeling sorry for her just because she’s a normal down to earth person. Come on she tried to fiddle the system and got caught out. She isn’t thick is she? You can’t tell me she has never heard of stamp duty? The ministers would have spoken about it loads in meetings she should have an accountant and lawyers don’t advise on this. She lied she got caught she resigned before she was sacked. Hopefully this will teach the others who lie about stuff they are not invincible just because of their position. They are all as bad as each no party is worthy of running the country.

As set out in paras b)-d) of the Ethics Adviser’s letter, the conveyancing solicitor was not engaged to provide expert tax advice - they recommended she get expert tax advice, which she didn’t do.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68bac57c536d629f9c82ab4b/Letter_from_the_Independent_Adviser_to_the_Prime_Minister.pdf

but if you check out her attacking of the opposition when they were in power then she really needed to be whiter than white to survive. She only got what she gave.

I agree @Shellyash, she so vociferously attacked other politicians’ financial affairs
(not saying that she shouldn’t have) that any financial misstep or mistake on her part would inevitably lead to this.

@Neededa The irony is that the white working-class woman who became the first female prime minister was the political polar opposite of AR. What a wasted opportunity.

I admire AR, how she has as a single parent worked her way through life to get where she got, I am sad she has had to step down, I do hope there will be a way back for her.

When you think that others, who are quite rich, ‘pay’ taxes at a much lower rate or have hustle side lines in the parlement buildings/time do not lose their jobs is do not seem right.

We haven’t had a working class female PM yet. I really don’t know where the idea that Thatcher was working class has come from. She was the daughter of a business owner, who was also a local dignitary, grammar school and Oxford educated, married to a wealthy lawyer. She was middle class through and through.

@Blossomtoes I thought that her parents ran a sweet shop? In those days of more rigid class structures, surely they would have been considered working class? Not impoverished like AR obviously.

Yes, she did have education and married a wealthy man.

Anyway, my point was that AR could have been the first working class Labour female PM.

So what? It doesn't change the fact that she apparently chose to exploit her political position for all it was worth, despite the fact that she had a very good salary. She has made a career out of steely-eyed, venomous pronouncements about 'the wealthy' and 'the rich', yet she's more than happy to take their gifts and their flats in New York when she fancies a nice holiday, and generally to live it up on someone else's dime while the policies she's chosen make everyone else's lives harder. Please don't pretend you can't see the hypocrisy.

It was a grocers’ shop and no, small business owners were solidly middle class in the 1920s and 30s. Her father was an alderman and Mayor of Grantham. Working class occupations were manual labour. My grandad was apparently considered working class aristocracy because he was a foreman on a dust cart!

This...

It's also worth noting the following:
"I consider, however, that her unfortunate failure to settle her SDLT liability at the correct level, coupled with the fact that this was established only following intensive public scrutiny, leads me to advise you that, in relation to this matter, she cannot be considered to have met the “highest possible standards of proper conduct”

Quite damning.

She was forced to resign because she breached the ministerial code. No one is to blame for that except Angela Rayner.

Great post!

At least she did resign though. She didn’t have to, and we’ve had a lot of examples in the last 7 or so years of ministers who broke the ministerial code but didn’t resign.

I really wish she’d never done this (and a few other things e.g. staying in Lord Alli’s NY apartment for free whilst trumpeting her working class everywoman credentials), and I am very disappointed with other things the Labour government have done over the last year (e.g. them accepting free tickets or free clothes, and the Winter Fuel Allowance cuts), but I also want to commend her for resigning.

Completely agree, one of the last of the real
left wing leaders who we need more than ever right now with the direction Labour is taking/Reform hovering.
The party should have had her back more, clearly the press were going to try and take her down, can’t help thinking they’d have carried on until they did tbh..
Compared to what the Tories got away with over the years what she has done is not great but pretty minimal.
People have short memories, the Tories spanked loads of money up the wall, expenses scandel, Johnson spending 2.6 million on a press room and another 200,000 whilst leaving vulnerable people to die in care homes during the pandemic. Oh and ministers watching porn in the HOC etc etc etc

Her father owned the local newsagents and grocers and was an alderman
( locally voted in )
She won a scholarship to the local Grammar school and went to Oxford. Presumably because she got the right grades

Hardly the picture you are trying to portray

Exactly

Balls , she was Deputy PM and Minister for Housing FFS, she found a potential loophole and exploited it and got caught out. She wouldn’t have been soft on anyone else doing the same, she flouted the rules she put in place. Us mere mortals wouldn’t have got away with it either. She’s a hypocrite - working class has got nothing to do with it. Double standards.

@blossomtoes. Fair enough. My grandparents had a different experience-they had to elope as my Grandma worked in a shop and my Grandfather’s family (business owners) were horrified that they wanted to marry. Different times.