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.

Just the 'birthday cake' then??

What about all his other 'crimes and misdemeanors' -

illegally proroguing parliament
other covid parties for which he was fined
£600/roll wallpaper saga
infidelity to his cancer stricken wife
etc
etc
etc

I agree.

. deleted mis-read the post

Everyone makes mistakes. It’s unavoidable. But the test of a persons character, in my view, is how they deal with them. Rayner knew at the beginning of the week that she’d made a a mistake. But, rather than own it at that point, put her hands up and offer her resignation she dragged her family, her disabled son, his trust and her advisors in to the debacle in an attempt to convince everyone that her affairs were very complicated, she was badly advised and she hadn’t done anything wrong. She, or Starmer, also had various members of the front bench repeating that line, even though they knew it wasn’t the case. So, as is often the case, it was not the original mistake that brought her down, but the repeated attempts to deny, to cover up, to deflect and then blame others for it.

Edited to add, if she had acted swiftly and early and paid the tax I think Starmer would have had a reasonable case not to accept her resignation. Maybe a mini reshuffle to move her from housing. But we will never know if that would have worked.

How do you know she ‘couldn’t afford’ the flat? I’m pretty sure she could. And what exactly do you mean by ‘she forgot who she is’? Should people who were born working-class never buy expensive property even when they can afford it - or am I misunderstanding your comment?

How could she afford the flat?

With a mortgage like everyone else.

By not paying the full stamp and taking an extra £80k from the trust fund.
That gave her an extra £120,000k for the down payment
Had she paid the correct stamp and had the trust property valued correctly she would have been short that £120,000.

Clearly she did her maths and fiddled the system to afford it

Yes granted all that. Trouble is, there’s no credibility in moral outrage only for people you don’t like. Justice would be chaos with that mindset (and actually is becoming dangerously close to that!) soppy sentimentality has no place in politics or justice.

No I don't particularly like him - but I was responding to a post which was minimsing his multitudinous 'crimes and misdememeanors' ad absurdam

Maybe I should have just typed a row of laughing emojis instead [shrug]

But still doesn’t answer the question of how she could afford that mortgage on her salary.

according to a quick Google her salary was £161,000

So according to another quick Google she could afford the mortgage ( with many caveats )
she can’t now though

Wonder who she has a mortgage with. Has anyone checked Land Registry ?

Exactly. What others have or have not done is completely irrelevant other than as a convenient smokescreen to try to deflect AR's behaviour.
It's the hypocrisy. That's all

You mean ridicule like calling her scum?
Sorry that was AR, charmer that she is. But those awful Tories ridiculing Labour, eh?

Irrelevant. We are talking about Angela Rayner, not Boris Johnson

The post I was replying to was raising the Johnson 'birthday cake' nonsense

So entirely relevant if you'd read the thread

Would you prefer Nye Bevan’s version? His preferred term was vermin.

Neither. I would expect all people in public office to be able to conduct themselves without name-calling.

Better tell Johnson that. Oh, it’s not about him, is it?

What Boris Johnson did or didn't do is completely irrelevant to a thread about Angela Rayner.
You are defending clear wrongdoing by saying someone else was worse. That is not a defence.

She could’ve easily afforded the flat mortgage on her salary and with savings.

She was a Cabinet minister when she bought the flat, and from publicly available info, an MP’s salary is £93,904 and a Cabinet minister’s salary is £67,505 (both correct as of this April). Added together, those two salaries are £161,409.

If we assume she then took out a mortgage that was four and a half times that salary, which is fairly common, she would’ve been given a mortgage of £726,340.

She would then have needed to find £73,660, to make up the difference, as well as money for the £30k stamp duty she paid for the flat (so £103k in total), which she either already had in savings or got from her sold portion of the Ashton under Lyne house which she’d put into that trust.

Yes, the trust and tax arrangements are murky, but I think she could comfortably the flat.

Instead of trying to police my posts perhaps you could raise it instead with the actual poster @GoodEnough1 who brought him up

Thanks

No it's not. Why do you want to talk about him when the thread is about AR?
I guess you would be OK with AR constantly being dragged up in a thread discussing another party's indiscretions?

I think that’s pretty much inevitable if it’s relevant.

But it's one of your compadres who brought Boris Johnson into the thread at 11.19

You need to scold the correct poster