UK cannot install Angela Rayner as Deputy PM with unanswered tax-dodging allegations hanging over her
Rayner’s pain
A LABOUR Party 21 points ahead and with a 99 per cent chance of winning power can expect new levels of scrutiny few of its MPs have experienced.
Deputy leader Angela Rayner plainly loathes it already. But Britain cannot install her as second in command of a new Government with unanswered tax-dodging allegations hanging over her.
Her prickly reaction to questions (er . . . the Tories are awful, she says) is typical. But this is not the moment for smokescreens and partisan whataboutery.
The tax claims police are now probing are not “smears”. They are legitimate and demand honest, detailed answers.
Labour’s current defence amounts to no more than “someone told her she had nothing to pay”. We do not know who, what their qualifications were to give tax advice or what their reasoning was.
It is extraordinary that Keir Starmer, who would “forensically” probe any Tory engulfed in just such a mire, seems so incurious about Rayner’s behaviour that he has not yet insisted on seeing her mysterious guidance.
Nor does he think she needs to publish it. Why ever not? We can only conclude he cannot countenance losing his deputy and has stuck his fingers in his ears.
Rayner repeatedly claims she has been “clear”. That’s ridiculous when there are key questions she simply won’t answer.
Did she avoid capital gains tax on the profit from selling her house in 2015 by claiming it was her principal home, when she was in fact living elsewhere with her husband?
And when they sold THAT house in 2016, did they pay the tax then? Because a married couple cannot legally nominate two main homes.
The amount Rayner might owe may be insignificant. We cannot yet know.
But the scandal, as she continues to duck and weave, is mushrooming to a much higher order of magnitude.
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WHY, for the first time, would an England away shirt sell more than a home shirt?
Could it be our fans are too patriotic to sport Nike’s multi-coloured “interpretation” of our national flag? And that they prefer the away kit because that dayglo eyesore isn’t visible on it?
We don’t blame them for avoiding it.
It really is a nasty piece of woke.
Evan’s ordeal
A YEAR ago an innocent young reporter was slung in a bleak Russian jail cell, a pawn in Vladimir Putin’s sickening game.
London-based Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal was seized on trumped-up spying charges and held solely as a bargaining chip for Putin.
It is a testament to him that it has not broken his spirit. But do spare a thought for Evan and his family this weekend.
And have a great Easter.