You reap what you sow. In a week where the Labour Party have outlined their plans to crack down on tax dodgers, Angela Rayner and the Labour party are starting to learn the meaning of the phrase ‘people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’ as questions over her tax affairs rumble on.
Angela Rayner and the rest of the Labour Party love trying to tar the Conservative Party with the moniker of ‘sleaze’, but now that she is embroiled in a scandal of her own, she seems to have gone incredibly quiet, doesn’t she?
A tax avoider is not just stealing from HMRC, they are stealing from every single hard-working taxpayer up and down the country, stealing from the NHS, our roads and our schools. Labour just this week have argued that paying tax is central to the values that we all sign up to in society. The Labour MP Margaret Hodge in a Guardian article this week said that not contributing what is due to the common pot is “both morally reprehensible and illegal.”
I agree and while it may prove that Rayner played things by the book, it doesn’t hide the fact that there may well have been some kind of tax trickery involved here be it legal or illegal. So how dare she and her Labour colleagues sit upon their high horses and present themselves as the arbiters of political morality?
David Lammy last week stated, “there is a different arrangement in expectation for the prime minister in this context, we’re not yet in government.” But Keir Starmer has spent the last few years repeating the line “one rule for them and another for everyone else”, so why do Starmer and his allies now seem to be suggesting that these ‘rules’ do not apply to his own deputy?
Angela Rayner is after all seeking to be in Government, and those seeking high office should hold themselves to the same standard they hold Government Ministers. What message does it send to the British public when they ask question after question of our Prime Minister and other senior Ministers but refuse to answer the same questions themselves? Why are the Labour Party so scared about questions being asked about their politicians' characters and conduct?
Could it perhaps be that they know they are not as infallible as they would like us all to believe and that their actions and words over the last few years have set them on a course that will prove them to be the unashamed hypocrites they are.
Rayner herself is as much of a hypocrite as her colleagues, in January 2022 she tweeted “Boris Johnson's Downing Street is under police investigation, how on earth can he think he can stay on as Prime Minister?” So the news today that Greater Manchester Police have launched an investigation into Angela Rayner to see whether any offences have been committed begs the question, how on earth does Angela Rayner think she can stay on as Labour Deputy Leader?
Rayner’s position means she is the would-be Deputy Prime Minister and she owes it to the British people to be honest and upfront about her tax affairs. I don’t want to suggest that Rayner had ill intent, this could have been classic Labour economic incompetence. We all make mistakes but come on Angela, just be honest!
