Angela Rayner is taking a career break after Laurie Magnus, the prime minister’s adviser on ministerial interests, ultimately found against her in her handling of her tax affairs.
Rayner’s departure is a disaster for the prime minister and for the government – although most of the damage has already been done. The verdict in the court of public opinion will be negative. She paid less stamp duty on her Brighton flat, albeit in “good faith”, than she should have done, and if it hadn’t been for journalists asking questions, she would have got away with it.
Which means that, in the eyes of the voters, Labour ministers are no better than their Conservative predecessors. “They are all the same” is a perception that is particularly dangerous at a time when the traditional parties are threatened by a new party that promises to be different.
In fact, there are just so many ways that Rayner’s tax affairs are a gift to Nigel Farage. I have seen some outlandish theories on social media about the deputy prime minister’s difficulties being manufactured by the government as a distraction from Reform’s annual conference in Birmingham today and tomorrow. On the contrary: if Farage had been allowed to write the script for the past few weeks, he would not have dared to make it so favourable to his interests.
It is not just that Labour seems no better than the Tories in ministerial ethics, but that Labour pays a heavier price for its transgressions because it has been so sanctimonious in the past. Starmer and Rayner’s recent condemnations of Tory ministers’ tax avoidance are like the backing chorus to the news at the moment.
If you want to know how that works, just look at Farage cutting his tax bill by having his TV fees paid into a company, and by putting the house he has bought in his Clacton constituency in his girlfriend’s name. He gets away with it because he has never been “holier than thou” about other politicians’ self-interested conduct.
Nor does the good news for Farage stop there. With Rayner’s departure, Labour’s war effort against Reform is undermined. “She needs to be on Farage-killing duty,” one Labour insider had told me. She has been the party’s most authentic communicator with working-class voters outside London who have defected to Reform or who might do so.
By resigning as deputy leader, Rayner has triggered an election among Labour members that will become a vote of confidence in Starmer. Survation found in June, for instance, that more Labour members wanted a change of leadership before the next general election than did not.
But if there is any good news to be had for Starmer, it is that I do not think Rayner will become a “backbench martyr” and a focus for internal opposition to the prime minister. That is the reason that George Osborne gave on his podcast with Ed Balls for saying that he thought she would stay in government.
Meanwhile, the smile on Farage’s face just gets wider and wider. No wonder he is gaining easy headlines by the free-hit prediction of an election in 2027.
