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Angela Rayner has admitted to not paying the full amount of tax on her second home in an interview today.

Should she resign?

On 10/08/2025 at 23:56, Steve201 said:

Also interesting to note that only 22 MPs voted against banning Palestine Action the Greens, SDLP (Eastwood) and the Labour left/Corbyn.

The liberals and SNP/PC abstained!

I would assume the three that abstained did so to avoid the optics of voting no to proscribe two neo nazi parties. Theres devolved elections next year, we don’t want to be leaving such an open goal for the unionists to walk through. Plaid are vitally important for shutting Reform out of power in Wales and the Scottish media will use any minor opportunity to cry SNP bad.

For all three parties it works out better as they are either in power, have the potential to be or potential to be king makers and no one wants a „tell us about that time you voted against banning a neo nazi party and how that means the public can sleep safely“

26 minutes ago, Steve201 said:

Angela Rayner has admitted to not paying the full amount of tax on her second home in an interview today.

Should she resign?

According to her own statement (so likely attempting to make her look good), it's the end result of a relatively complicated housing situation where she engaged professionals to understand her tax obligations, and she was badly advised. I don't have too much interest in poking further to see if it was justified or not. Mainly because my imagining is that if she were a normal citizen who this happened to, the only consequence would be having to make it up to HMRC after the mistake was found, and it doesn't seem on the surface of it like a situation where financial benefit was achieved through corruption.

One for the ethics committee, and we'll see if she has to resign from the government. It would be rather awkward if she has to resign as deputy PM though, as she will still be deputy leader of Labour in her elected position there.

She hasn't been the best representative for the party's left we could have hoped for, but she's about all that is left in Labour precisely because of that deputy position so this could be crucial (plus the papers have it out for her more than most Labour politicians) - at the moment it looks like Starmer is backing her. Until he's not of course.

If it is a complex transaction and circumstances then it could be that she’s simply taking a pro-fiscal position and not fighting a judgment from HMRC that interprets the law in a different way to how the advisor did. Happens daily and the optics of her fighting it at a tribunal are far worse than her saying she didn’t pay a full tax liability on a transaction she was advised on.

And HMRC it should be noted is not infallible. They’re quite often incorrect in the application of tax law. HMRC vs McVities in the Jaffa Cake VAT tribunal being a rather famous example of HMRC being unable to understand the law.

Tax law is complex in ways that the general public really do not even begin to understand. I would assume she’s fallen foul of some CGT rules, quite often the case when second homes are involved especially if she’d previously lived at the address as her primary residence. There’s a reason Tax Consulting is such a big and recession proof industry.

Not CGT but Stamp Duty! A viciously complicated Tax. As suspected it looks like she was advised on this, the advice was incorrect and she’s making a self-disclosure to HMRC to correct the underpayment of the tax.

If she was advised by a tax professional or someone she had reasonable cause to believe was speaking with the appropriate knowledge then as far as I am concerned she did everything correct. She sought advice, the advice was unfortunately incorrect and now she is correcting that error after it was brought to light. Happens literally every day in every country of the world.

Will just have to see when the report comes out if a impartial third party thinks she sought advice from an appropriate source or not.

And she’s gone. So I’m gonna assume she didn’t seek appropriate advice and that lead to an unfortunate situation. But ignorance of the law and failure to obtain proper advice is not an accepted by HMRC as an excuse and as a minister she should know better.

Shame. Helpful to have real people with real life experiences in public office. I’m sure we will see her back at some point

I guess we will see when we see the report and it is published. I would say, well done though for getting ahead of the story and resigning. I think this would have really put Starmer in a difficult place.

I do think if the shoe was on the other fit and it was Reform/Tories, then Labour would be calling for their heads. So at least the leadership has recognised this.

one of the most 'hounded out by the fucking press' situations in a while (the Express rag has: 'Angela Rayner's grubby hypocrisy will never be forgiven by UK voters' which is fucking laughable given who it's coming from and the types of politicians they normally back doing far worse).

Definitely possible that some wrongdoing was done if she has resigned, alternatively could just be an acknowledgement that the baying from the public spaces had got so loud that they wouldn't expect anything other than a resignation, which is true after the last few days.

Very interesting that she has also resigned as deputy leader, means that members of the party may well be empowered to put in a new left-wing figure there, should one step up.

Looks like she’s followed the independent adjudicator and resigned due to her failure to obtain proper advice. While not malicious is still negligent and not in line with code of conduct

Resigning is in line with what labour has been preaching on integrity in public office and its correct. She shouldn’t have to be fired, she should have the decency to resign if found to have violated the rules and its good that she has done

I cannot express in words how much unbridled JOY I feel at the sacking of Ian Murray. Dirty turncoat

This feels like a punishment for Starmer rather than for Rayner on proxy charges with the real topic being immigration etc.

Sending a message of 'look what we can do' as opposed to anyone REALLY caring that much about Rayner's house selling earnings.

A shame :(

1 hour ago, J00prstar said:

This feels like a punishment for Starmer rather than for Rayner on proxy charges with the real topic being immigration etc.

Sending a message of 'look what we can do' as opposed to anyone REALLY caring that much about Rayner's house selling earnings.

Not really. I think she probably has not followed the process. It's a shame as I liked her, but she did not really have anywhere else to go.

I think going this way means she can go to the back benches and have a comeback in a few years.

Rumours that Starmer was planning a reshuffle before conference but not as big as this.

Lammy becomes Deputy PM. Mahmood is new Home Secretary with Yvette Cooper new Foreign Sec.

Quite nice timing for a reshuffle, drowns out the Faragist posturing from their conference - if intentional that's one of the best political strategy moves the government have made in a long while and takes at least some of the heat out of the Rayner resignation, it's just the start of a big government change-up.

Not a great reshuffle to be honest, Cooper I thought was doing fine as Home Sec and Mahmood is pretty harsh on that front, so we're doubling down there. Lammy had some weaknesses as Foreign Sec but was building relations and Cooper for all her experience has never struck me as a diplomat, McFadden at Work & Pensions is potentially horrific, though Kendall wasn't doing much there anyway - and Peter Kyle as business secretary isn't great either.

But we'll see how things shape in their new briefs - though I was hoping the Starmer government would do less of the switching ministers around and instead let them develop their expertise. At least Miliband is still in place (cannot overstate how essential that appointment is becoming to the success of this government).

Such a shame as I really liked her, but she has been largely ineffective in office so far and this was just such an incompetent move that she really should've known better, the optics especially on a second home in a cost of living crisis are terrible (and from the HOUSING secretary of all posts, oh dear x). I think this was the only way to go and shows integrity, just annoying that people that have principles can notice when they need to go and those that don't like the last government just get away with it and the press let them, sigh x

We will definitely have a deputy leader of the Labour Party election that won't line up with deputy PM then too, as Lammy is very unlikely to win with the membership - he probably won't even put himself forward.

Could be quite spicy. I expect either a woman or a working-class vibe MP to be in the mix, but the party membership will be probably be extremely ready to stick it to Starmer and almost certainly nominate the most left-wing candidate who puts themselves forward. Which is that potential rift that Farage thinks may lead to a 2027 election - though that is very unlikely unless he keeps harping on about it.

Mahmood???

The deputy leadership contest will be like manna from heaven for the socialist campaign group as a referendum on Starmers rightward shift hopefully!