Is Angela Raynor a liar or is it all anti Labour media bias?

[CormorantStrikesBack]

I’m well aware how anti Labour a lot of the main stream media seem to be so I wasn’t paying much attention previously to all the stuff about how she should have paid capital gains tax on her house, etc. she was adamant that she didn’t need to.

So it seems like she said it was her main residence so not liable for capital gains tax. But her husband and kids lived in a house a short distance away apparently for the first five years of their marriage which is unusual. A neighbour who lived next to her “husband’s” house said it was the main family home and Angela definitely lived there.

I’ll be sad if she has lied. Always thought she was on the side of the ordinary person. I guess the police/tax man might have a hard time proving anything though regardless of the neighbour’s statement. If all bills, etc were in the individual names there’s no evidence.

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying So no Russian influence in the Brexit referendum? even the foreign affairs committee said the Govt found none because they never looked for any..... PPE all good, no contracts handed out to Tory donors with zero exp of PPE.... Mone?

Uk certainly did not apply sanctions at a faster rate to European countries, indeed after Salisbury, the UK had applied less sanctions than almost anyone else.
Even now, UK sanctions are very weak, UK companies are trading with ex soviet countries and UK goods and services still find their way into Moscow shops and showrooms, even stuff that can be used in war.

No surprise as London is still awash with Russian money and who wants to dig too deeply into that?

What Labour did, under Blair, is irrelevant, different world and he isn't in power.

However, dressing up corruption as incompetence, is a handy way of hiding corruption.

Anyway, this is all far removed from Rayner and still no evidence she did anything wrong.......

https://bylinetimes.com/2024/04/10/angela-rayner-tax-protest-was-staged-by-conservative-politicians-posing-as-tax-activists/

So that supposedly grassroots ‘tax protest’ against Angela Rayner today, was actually organised by the Conservative party.

Local Conservative Cllr John Coulson told Adam Bienkov he staged the stunt alongside other local Tory politicians.

They inherited an economy heading for bankruptcy (no, I’m not referring to the Treasury note: that was a joke and a convention) and then had the costs of covid on one hand,

Seriously, they didn't. It's much less black and white and much more complicated than that. And their austerity policies stifled economic recovery rather than accelerating it.

There were 10 years between the accession of the coalition and the COVID pandemic. The Tories had that 10 years to sort out the economy and didn't. You make it sound as if one event followed hot on the heels of the other.

The classic 'Labour are so bad on the economy' trope has been thoroughly shot down; I know you are structurally unable to use Google for some reason, but again it's much less simple than that.

I'm not playing whataboutery with you, sorry.

It's absolutely laughable to have one poster continue to stand up for the Tories and insist that the corruption stories are untrue. There are just SO MANY corruption stories and so much evidence. Far too much to list but I really appreciate the posters on here who have named many.

Honestly, if that one poster isn't actually a Tory employee then I wonder what else they're hoping to gain.

I can't stand the woman but I have no interest in whether she saved a few quid on a house sale

@Zonder when we live in a world where so many Tory MPs have been suspended leading to the loss of their seats, defending them and saying the Tories are not corrupt is laughable. Corruption is not just a thing in the legal sense; there is also the matter of how you conduct yourself. The PPE situation may not have been illegal, but we ended up with a system where established providers were ignored and contracts given to MPs' friends - and it was the NHS who suffered. One of the things I did during the early stages of the pandemic was deliver what little PPE we had to the places where it was most needed. It was scary how little we had.

I can Google fine, thanks. I asked a pp to provide links to proven government corruption because she asserted it.

She didn’t wouldn’t/couldn’t.

Why is that so hard to understand?

The economy was recovering after the post-Brown years. Covid damaged the economy massively (although the recovery was better than predicted), plus energy price shock.

Austerity v Keynesian expansion is an opinion. Fine, but there’s no proof that yet more printing and borrowing would have done anything other than create a bigger problem. I recognise that Labour was at the mercy of the knock-on effect of reckless American domestic lending, but it is undeniable that Labour had depleted any contingency.

I really don’t think the ‘Labour is a good economic steward’ mantra is made out, though I do accept that’s ultimately an opinion too.

Brown’s pension raid was one ‘highlight’ of poor Labour economic management, as was Labour’s eagerness to exploit PFI. All very sleight of hand.

Ok. But since we have no more recent Labour government record to go on, you’re a bit stuck with it.

Not relevant if they lived together as a husband and wife can only have one main residence. If they have another residence and sell it then they need to pay CGT on any profit above the CGT allowance.

Fraud on the government is not fraud by the government. I think it would be unwise to comment on present cases, for other reasons.

The allegedly strongest case of suspicion of Russian funding has been looked at in court and by the police, with powers to compel disclosure. There was no evidence of Russian funding.

Re sanctions busting, it’s just not true that the UK is worse in that respect than any other European country. And most of the UK’s exports and deals are in markets like luxury cars, not in things like optics or military electronics.

I tried to post a graph of CEIC (a highly regarded analysis company) data showing EU exports to Kyrgyzstan - which is supposedly the disguised gateway to Russia - but it won’t load. It’s very clear about widespread exports to Kyrgyzstan across European states.

I have said that AR hasn’t been proved to have done anything wrong and it’s a non-story anyway!

Assuming you mean me, no, I am not an employee of the Tory party. Neither am I a member of the Tory party nor any kind of activist. I’ve never been any of these things.

Like you I have a political point of view and I enjoy discussing politics. I also think I’m very reasonable - but then I suppose I would think that.

I certainly dislike falsehoods, whichever side utters them. As simple and relatively recent examples, I thought the Tory attacks on Starmer about him being DPP through Savile and Rotherham were disgraceful; and Tom Watson’s promotion of Carl Beech’s lies about politicians and others - many of them Tories - was also utterly disgraceful.

Alexandra2001
Apparently, about 10% [of couples] marry but dont cohabitate

Around 10% of couples in a stable relationship live separately but that doesn't mean they are married couples. Nearly 50% of Living Apart Together couples in the UK are aged 18-24 (Wikipedia). Married couples might be separated if one partner lives in a care home or serving a prison sentence but that's not through choice.

Alexandra2001
Her brother lived there.... with her

So, Angela Rayner, her brother, her tween/teen son and her two younger sons all lived together in the smaller 2 bedroomed house - or

Angela Rayner lived with her brother, whilst her three children lived in a different house and she visited "sometimes".

Which scenario seems more plausible to you? I don't believe either of them.

If she sold the property within 18 months of her marriage then she would have had to pay back some of the Right to Buy discount - 20% in year 5 of ownership or 40% in year 4 (according to current rules). She purchased the property from the council in 2007 but I don't know the month of purchase or the month she married in 2010.

I wouldn't do this, that's how I judge it. I'm not interested in 'oh but Tories', especially as she called them 'scum'. I expect her to be better.

AdamRyan
She was a care worker

According to an article in the Guardian a few years ago; she became a full-time union official when she was in her early 20s.

I'm assuming then that she didn't put 'care worker' on her mortgage application form when she purchased the property - so she is being a little disingenuous describing herself as such in relation to the purchase/sale.

When Angela Rayner sold her property she had already been selected as the Labour candidate for Aston-under-Lyne in advance of the 2015 election (by some months).

More embarrassment for Rayner this afternoon as it emerges that in 2021 she wrote to the Chair of the Conservatives demanding that Hartlepool candidate Jill Mortimer publish her tax returns (because she had previously lived in the Cayman Islands). However, it was then revealed that Mortimer had lived there with her family as her then-husband was a regulator, working on a counter-fraud, anti-corruption, and anti-terrorist financing.

10 April 2024
Rayner branded ‘hypocrite’ for demanding Tory candidate publish tax details

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/10/angela-rayner-starmer-tax-council-house-row-sunak-tory/

Original story here;
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9516309/Tories-accuse-Angela-Rayner-slur-against-Hartlepool-candidate.html

Her work in the care sector introduced her to the trade union Unison, and from there to politics.

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/mar/23/angela-rayner-roots-rough-edges-ready-for-power

123H
The issue over her alleged CGT was fully explained by a tax lawyer on the James O'Brien show (LBC) this morning. His summary ... nothing to see here!

I heard that clip as well.

James O'Brien may have framed it as 'nothing to see here', but if I remember correctly, the tax lawyer (Dan Neidle) ended his summary by saying that it was 'not satisfactory' for senior politicians to make misleading statements about their tax and that Angela Rayner should 'clarify which exemption' her property sale falls under.

DuncinToffee
Her work in the care sector introduced her to the trade union Unison, and from there to politics

Yes, I know - but she is clearly trying to play the 'dumb' care worker to avoid answering questions.

Really?

DuncinToffee
Really?

Yes - I think so.

It's working - Sky's tax adviser (not Neidle) said a few days ago;

"... She wasn't Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the Labour Party, she was a care worker"

• but she wasn't a care worker when she bought the property or when she sold it. When she sold the property she had already worked as Unison's convenor in the North West of England, representing 200,000 workers.

Rachel Reeves:

"Angela has answered questions about this in quite some detail..."

If the police find Ange has committed a criminal offence or HMRC find she has deliberately evaded tax, then she should step down. Until such time there is nothing to see here.

Why does that logic not apply outside Labour?