Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Crabcakes wrote: ↑Fri Apr 12, 2024 10:36 pm I also suspect that Rayner has been quietly advised that no action will be taken, hence her offer to resign if wrongdoing is found. Same as Starmer - you wouldn’t hand the Tories a gift unless you knew it was booby trapped.

No action can be taken, it timed out after a year.

That's the obvious one.

This isn't about shooting her down, it's about winging her and everyone talking.

First bird to be shot with a dead cat?

Oboogie wrote: ↑Sun Apr 14, 2024 6:25 pm

Crabcakes wrote: ↑Fri Apr 12, 2024 10:36 pm I also suspect that Rayner has been quietly advised that no action will be taken, hence her offer to resign if wrongdoing is found. Same as Starmer - you wouldn’t hand the Tories a gift unless you knew it was booby trapped.

No action can be taken, it timed out after a year.

Yep. Apparently it's not unknown for the police to take up cases that look obviously time-barred, because they sometimes turn out not to be. But you'd think they'd clear her fairly quickly in this case.

I think the Tories will be happy if the story keeps running up until the local elections in early May. Once the elections are out of the way either there will be lots of Tory infighting if the results are a disaster or if the results are better than expected there will probably be pressure on Sunak to call a snap election.

Julian Jessop here upping the ante a bit- "tax evasion"? The worst that's likely to happen is that HMRC send out a new assessment and she pays it, plus interest at a slightly punitive rate.

And anyway, I thought it was clear that she didn't have to live in the place she said was her main residence?

In the context of the “ Ming vase”, I’m guessing that with your immediate boss being a KC and former DPP, he’s gone over it with a fine tooth comb, and not given her any wriggle room in her explanation

Is this real? Chris Clarkson MP tells Burnham (who has no operational role in policing) to "stay out of" the investigation into Rayner.

Actually, it is real, isn't it?

James Daly who reported Rayner is a bit hazy on what offence he thinks she’s committed.

Straight talking Northern rightwinger there.

Majority of only 105 in a Leave voting seat. This effort is unlikely to help.

Another one whose soul will be broken at 3am in a leisure centre. This torturous wait is exquisite.

He's a charmer.

In September 2023, Daly wrote in the Bury Times that Labour's proposal to add VAT onto fee paying schools was "deeply depressing." In the article he praised the state education system but said that: "I was state-educated and will be forever grateful to my teachers for providing me with an enriching educational journey that I still benefit from today. The choices I make in my life today are directly linked to the aspiration and skills that my teachers and family taught me. One of those choices is to send my son to a fee-paying school."[14]

In December 2023 he said that most struggling children in his constituency are the "products of crap parents".[15] He later defended his comments, saying that he wanted "to ensure those from most disadvantaged backgrounds have best chance to thrive and succeed".

The New Statesman Nowcast has him losing his seat by over 25 percent.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 3:37 pm James Daly who reported Rayner is a bit hazy on what offence he thinks she’s committed.

I suspect the offense in question is Wasting Police Time.

Bones McCoy wrote: ↑Sat Apr 13, 2024 12:25 am I hear she once made tea and put the milk in first.

I regularly do this. Tastes absolutely no different either way and I am convinced this is the tea equivalent of paying £500 for gold hi-fi cables because you can ‘hear the difference’.

Crabcakes wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 10:56 am

Bones McCoy wrote: ↑Sat Apr 13, 2024 12:25 am I hear she once made tea and put the milk in first.

I regularly do this. Tastes absolutely no different either way and I am convinced this is the tea equivalent of paying £500 for gold hi-fi cables because you can ‘hear the difference’.

Ha ha. About as likely as Rayner being prosecuted, but still funny.

Nick Boles, former Tory MP, has waded in, righteously.

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/poli ... jd9HouCmi7

Sir, Having served for nine years as an MP I know how low politicians can stoop when their backs are against the wall.

But the Conservative attack on Angela Rayner is one of the most grotesque spectacles of hypocrisy I have witnessed.

On one side is a billionaire Tory peer, Lord Ashcroft, and a multimillionaire Tory prime minister, Rishi Sunak, whose families have all avoided paying millions of pounds in UK tax as beneficiaries of non-dom status, and who live lives of luxury.

On the other is a woman who grew up in poverty caring for her illiterate mother, who is now mother to a child who is registered blind, and who through her own guts and character has risen to be deputy leader of the Labour Party. Even Rayner’s accusers accept that the most she might have benefited from the error that they allege – and which she denies – is less than £3,000 in tax.

I suppose that her attackers cannot bear the idea that they are about to lose to a woman who pulled herself up by her bootstraps. And who is going to wipe the floor with them.

And Matthew Parris, another Tory :
=====================================================

The hounding of Angela Rayner is outrageous: brutal, snobbish and completely out of proportion to any mistake she may (or may not) have made. The sums are tiny and the issue itself — the deeming of a property as a main residence for capital gains tax purposes — has always been a matter of public confusion. I for one have discovered from the recent press reports that my own understanding was pretty cloudy.

As for the issue of the electoral register, the underlying purpose of the law here is to prevent voter fraud, and nobody is accusing Rayner of that. Every now and again we do just seem to lose our heads: in my book Great Parliamentary Scandals I devoted an extended chapter to a similar media frenzy after John Major’s “Back to Basics” speech. This led (for example) to front-page headlines about a little-known Tory backbencher who had kissed a young woman on a park bench.

So let’s cut to the chase: the “Get Rayner” media mood has been whipped up by party politicians, and the rest of us should have nothing to do with it. To me there’s more than a whiff both of misogyny and of class condescension in the portrayal of an uppity young woman — a left-winger for heaven’s sake — who has called the Tories rude names, benefited from Tory council-house sales and ought to know her place. Where was the Tory rage against the millionaire Nadhim Zahawi and his (he insists) mistaken tax declarations? Like the hounding of Peter Tatchell when he was a Labour candidate in a Bermondsey by-election in 1983, the Rayner affair is one of those stories we shall look back on and shudder at our loss of all perspective.

As for the so-called “Alastair’s law” — Alastair Campbell’s opinion that if an alleged scandal stays in the news for three days then its gravity must be accepted — commenters are treating media headlines as though they were weather events. But we have agency here. We help write the headlines. “Why are Rayner’s tax affairs a serious story?” “Because we’re still writing about them.” “Why are we still writing about them?” “Because they’re a serious story.” God help us. Hang on in there, Angela!

I see that James Daly has been on Sky and again was asked what offences he thinks GMP shouldbe investigating, given that he wrote to them wanting them to investigate Angela Rayner, and again he has peddled this line of "allowing them to investigate" but steadfastly refusing to say what they should be looking at.

The Times is saying 12 detectives are on the case. Hmm yes.

Simon

Here you go.