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 do think it’s a great shame, I liked her (for the most part, although she let herself down with the ‘scum’ comment).

But why was she using a high street conveyancing firm, not a solicitor, to use trust sale proceeds to purchase a home? I do find it a bit opportunistic to be honest. A little convenient as if she knew she could then fallback on their ignorance. You’re DPM, why are you declining to take tax advice when recommended to do so?

none of my business but I’m also curious why she bought a property hundreds of miles from her children (including disabled child). Seems an odd thing for a parent to do.

none of my business but I’m also curious why she bought a property hundreds of miles from her children (including disabled child). Seems an odd thing for a parent to do

IDK It's very close to London/her place of employment with excellent transport links. She will be spending weekends rather than weekdays with her children, in Ashton same as before - so no change there for them - ?maybe she also has other non-work commitments in Hove

I understood from the papers that her new partner (and his children? Not sure) are based in Hove.

You do realise she used some of the compensation money for the deposit for the new flat? Do you think that is ethical? Money from the tax payer, awarded to her son? And why does she want to move away from him?

Seems right. And it settles any debate about Starmer’s background. Solidly middle class: business-owning father, weekend flute lessons at Guildhall School of Music, and all.

i definitely do not feel sorry for AR !
in my book the worse thing any parent can do is take from your child.
She used her son’s NHS compensation money to sell him a 25 percent share of the family home which is part of a trust for him.
would you not leave your house in a trust for your children as a matter of course?
For her to do this she would have had expert advice as an unqualified person would not understand the concept of selling it to your underage child.
I find this more distasteful than the tax avoidance.

All of that is irrelevant.
The reason AR HAD to resign is because she has loudly called for resignations on the past over similar things.
That's all. It's the hypocrisy.

Do they mouth off calling for resignations of others doing the same thing though? Do they call people doing the same thing scum?
What others do or don't do is completely irrelevant. As is AR's gender, upbringing and the fact she has a disabled child.
You can't be first to fling insults at others and expect to get away with playing the system yourself.
It''s really simple.

I don’t think I said I feel sorry for her as such, I said I feel sad that we no longer have a working class woman as deputy prime minister.
I think I said that it became obvious she had to go, I’m just not revelling in the fact, at all.

It’s over an hour from London by train. That’s only just within daily commuting distance. More to the point, she already had a grace and favour mansion in London (where she mostly works) and Hove is absolutely nowhere near either her constituency (where she ought to spend at least some of her working time) or her children (whom she claimed she had done all this to benefit). If, as has been speculated, she moved to Hove because she is projected to lose her current seat and wanted to embed herself in advance in a safer seat, that is a gross dereliction of duty to her constituents, the people to whom she owes her first professional responsibility. If it was because her boyfriend is down there that’s a personal choice but again, it is unclear how she expected to continue to serve her constituents until the end of this Parliament while splitting her time between London and Hove. Either way it is plainly nothing to do with looking after any of her children.

Her father started from a poor background, worked hard and saved to buy the shop. She was brought up in a flat above the shop with no inside lavatory or hot water. She won a scholarship for grammar school. Not exactly a privileged upbringing, no moneyed background, but an environment where effort and work ethic were highly valued. Her father was a local councillor, who became mayor. Those roles are open to anyone, not only the middle classes.

It’s exactly what I said. 😂

She was brought up in a flat above the shop with no inside lavatory or hot water.

That was entirely normal in the 20s and 30s.

If anyone had told Thatcher she was working class she’d have handbagged them.

Alf Roberts had at least two grocery stores - they were not tiny sweet shops!

The family was able to support Margaret Roberts through university. It was a different world.

They were at the very top of the petit bourgeoisie in Lincolnshire, with additional status through their respectability and their political and religious commitments. In other words, very solid lower middle class.

'A flat above a shop' in the 1920s and 1930s was not the same as in Common People! Before the interwar semis were built, where else would they have lived?!

Someone earlier described Barbara Castle and Mo Mowlam as working class. Castle was middle class, though when she went to university she felt very 'Yorkshire'. Mowlam's upbringing was complicated by her father's alcoholism, but he became Coventry's assistant postmaster.

Would you accept that there was quite a sharp difference between lower and upper middle class, and also that in Thatcher’s youth the simple fact of being a woman was a significantly greater barrier to winning a place at Oxford and to pursuing a successful political career than it now is?

Yes.

She had a grace and favour house in London. Why did she need to say she brought in Hove to be near London. Another lie

Ok. The reason I brought Thatcher into this thread at all is that the OP and subsequent posts claimed that we should, as feminists, support Rayner because she was a woman who also faced class based barriers to success. I submit that whether you accept Thatcher as working class (in today’s terms, having a father who left school at 13 and therefore being the first in one’s family to attend university would generally qualify) or see her as lower middle class, she did face class based barriers to success, as well as substantially greater sex based barriers than Rayner faced. If we are asked to extend our feminist sympathies to Rayner, in spite of her arrogance, incompetence and (in many of our opinions) grotesque and vindictive political policies, I would like to know if those arguing for that would defend Thatcher?

Of course her career was a great achievement.

On whether being female meant getting to Oxford was relatively tougher then than now - possibly, in terms of how few colleges there were for women. And of course the professional and political worlds were near-impenetrable for women.

However, she went up in 1943, when it was particularly difficult for young men to get places. This must have benefited young women with political ambitions who got involved in OUCA and so on.

The generation of young women who went to university during the war years did remarkably well later on (thinking of the quartet of philosophers in particular).

My sense though is that it would be harder for someone like a young Margaret Roberts, studying at KGGS, to get to Oxford now - it is so much more competitive. The university was smaller then, but the pool of applicants much smaller when the vast majority left school at 14.

My dm’s father was serially unemployed during the 30s. She had six siblings. Later in life gm lived in a council high rise. Dm had a scholarship to a public school (where she was known as “Scholarship Girl” ) and thus did the classic “moving up” manoeuvre.

Mil was the dd of a single mother cook/housekeeper. If you’d met mil you would have thought she was the Duchess of Ponceyshire. (fil btw left school at 13; also child of single mother abandoned by father)

My point is that many people - especially in the era of Margaret Thatcher, being that she has been mentioned - come from poor - nay, very poor, backgrounds. Angela Rayner is not the Only Working Class Woman because she leans into the accent and wears bovver boots.

Before being derailed by whether Thatcher was working-class (!) I looked at the Laurie Magnus letter. The key section is:

... having reviewed it, I would draw four conclusions:

a) Ms Rayner was open about the existence of the Trust and considered that, between them, the firms advising her had appropriate knowledge and awareness of the details and circumstances of the Trust;

b) on the basis of the advice she received, Ms Rayner believed that the lower rate of SDLT would be applicable; indeed she was twice informed in writing that this was the case; but

c) in those two instances, that advice was qualified by the acknowledgement that it did not constitute expert tax advice and was accompanied by a suggestion, or in one case a recommendation, that specific tax advice be obtained; and

d) if such expert tax advice had been received, as it later was, it would likely have advised her that a higher rate of SDLT was payable.

(I added the underlining.)

It sounds as if the tone of the advice was more along the lines of 'this looks fine to us but of course you should get specialist advice'.

That feels quite different to a stern warning that 'we are of course not tax specialists and we warn you to seek specialist advice'.

If I had got that type of advice twice, I would have made exactly the same mistake, even though the stakes were so high. Many of us work on the position that two professional non-expert opinions provide enough reassurance - for all sorts of questions.

The tone of Magnus' report is much, much more sympathetic and regretful than I had realised, or expected. He concludes that in the end, she was responsible for making sure she wasn't relying on 'professional vibes'.

People with professional training probably do have more insight into how much service you're getting, or what the caveats mean in practical terms, and when to trust in professional advice and when to push a bit further. It's sad.

Not sure what 'the lie' is - Hove is indeed pretty close to London -just an hour by fast train to Victoria- and possibly a much pleasanter cleaner place to live than central London

Have you heard the mocking expression London- by- the- sea for B&H? The city is full of DFLers buying up all the 'cheap' desirable property [for decades] and commuting up to London

,

Thatcher became a (tax!) barrister in 1953. There were barely any women at the Bar then.

To become a female barrister in those days was quite amazing, particularly for someone from a lower middle class background.

On a ratio of where she came from and what she achieved in the social climate of the day, I’d say she was unsurpassed.

Yes and no. I have been told by both my lawyer and financial planner to seek advice from a tax accountant. Find it hard to believe she wasn't told the same.

The lie is that if she had a grace and favour house in London, why did she need another house anywhere “to be near London”.

My mother left school at 14 and I was the first in my family to go to university. My family was solidly middle class. We shouldn’t be judging anyone born 100 years ago by today’s standards, it was a different world. Nobody is minimising Thatcher’s achievements by recognising her middle class origins.

Of course the standout female politician from the same era as Thatcher in terms of achievement was Betty Boothroyd. And she achieved her success with the mentorship of Barbara Castle who was a feminist, unlike Thatcher who never appointed a single woman to her cabinet in eleven years.