It always seems trite to focus on ‘the optics’ of a political scandal rather than the substance of one, but the swirling row about Angela Rayner’s complex property affairs looks utterly disastrous, both for her and the government of which she is nominally the second-in-charge.
After a week of headlines about her purchase of an £800,000 flat in fashionable Hove – hundreds of miles from her east Manchester parliamentary seat – the Deputy Prime Minister has been forced to concede she had not paid the full amount of stamp duty owed.
Rayner’s much-publicised living arrangements, dividing her time between her central London grace-and-favour flat, her domestic home in Ashton-under-Lyne and her new flat, is given added complexity as she and her ex-husband share caring arrangements for their children, including a disabled son.
Wise, perhaps, for people without disabled children to withhold judgment about people who have – and it is perfectly feasible that Angela Rayner has followed the expert advice she received, which led her to underpay the correct amount of stamp duty, to the letter.
It seems plausible that the government’s standards adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, might see it that way. But that must be a hope rather than an expectation. For now, Angela Rayner is in big trouble.
She is not just a mother trying to juggle her domestic responsibilities; she is the deputy prime minister in a Labour government. One that presides over a divided, moribund country having won as little as 34% of the popular vote in last year’s general election.
To state the obvious; two-thirds of voters did not back Labour, with the government bequeathed the worst in-tray since Clement Attlee inherited the smoking ruins of post-war Britain.
