Disappointed, Proud, Sad: Watching Angela Rayner Resign
Her Departure is a Blow Not Just for Labour but to Anyone Who Values Honesty and Authenticity in Politics
I’m bitterly disappointed. I had written two versions of this post, and I’ve had to publish the one that I really didn’t want to. Quite a few of you may wonder why I haven’t said very much on the Rayner saga this week – the main reason is that I didn’t really know what to write. Facts were coming thick and fast, opinions were being raised, and the media coverage was, it is fair to say, absolutely frenzied.
The truth of the matter is that I like Angela Rayner. I’m a huge fan. She’s always been, in my mind at least, one of the most authentic members of the Labour Party - a woman with deep lived experience of poverty, a razor sharp political mind and a natural ability to cut through the ever present political jargon and say, in a somewhat unvarnished way, what most people are thinking.
She’s acted as an incredibly important counterweight to Starmer’s stuffy, managerial style which has grounded the party in something at least slightly recognisably human. I wanted this whole situation to be an overblown hitjob, the kind of witch-hunt we’ve witnessed so many times before against women, working-class MPs and, most importantly, women who are both of these things.
But, in the end, the facts were the facts. She owed the extra £40k in tax, and when the PM’s ethics advisor said her position was untenable, she did something we almost never see in British politics.
She resigned.
And the fact is, Angela Rayner was in the wrong - I don’t think it helps anyone to try and spin it otherwise. She should have paid the stamp duty. She got bad advice, sure, but there are loads of people who get bad advice and still end up with HMRC at the door demanding a payment.
However, I do feel a sense of pride in her. Instead of doubling down, going into full bluster mode or insulting the intelligence of the public, she owned it. She referred herself as soon as the story broke. She accepted the investigation and when the verdict came in this morning, she went.
This, in and of itself, shouldn’t be something that’s remarkable - it should instead be the norm of how we expect our politicians to act. Unfortunately for us, we live in a country where Boris Johnson clung on for ages after he was found to have been guilty of law-breaking with parties in Downing Street. Where Suella Braverman can use official resources to get herself out of speeding fines and where half the Cabinet at the time seemed to have forgotten about shares they were meant to declare.
Rayner has, to a very large extent, shown remarkable decency. This is going to be cold comfort for many, because we’ve lost one of Labour’s strongest figures at what is possibly the worst time, but, it still matters.
This subject would not be complete without discussing the frenzy of the last week though. While Rayner was wrong, the sheer, immense scale of the coverage was absurd. It’s completely dominated the news cycle this whole week, with every single minute detail of her finances being picked over, every possible inconsistency, no matter how irrelevant, blown up into a front-page scandal.
Would it have been the same if this were a man with a posh accent from an Oxbridge background? Honest opinion? I doubt it.
Rishi Sunak very easily survived both the non-dom questions about his wife and the curious questions about his blind trusts. Jeremy hunt, whose family business interests have brushed uncomfortable closely to his ministerial briefs, or Johnson, who managed to lie so often and so casually that fact-checkers had to create entire, brand new categories of falsehoods just to keep up.
And there are many people who will deny this, but gender and class have absolutely played a role in this. Rayner’s accent, roots and her way of speaking - all of these have made her an easier target. Media in the UK has never known quite what to do with working-class women who go outside of their lanes - from tabloid objectification to open mockery, the hostility is baked in. She is just far “too much” for them to handle - too loud, too blunt and far too Northern.
That in no way excuses her mistake, believe me - but it does explain the spectacle we’ve seen over the past week or so, and it raises a question:
If this is what happens to someone with a background like Rayner’s, how many people with similar backgrounds will be put off from entering politics in the first place?
And there’s something else in this whole saga that I’ve been wrestling with - where’s the line when it comes to ethics?
We need standards in politics - no one would disagree with that. We need politicians to be held accountable when they’ve made mistakes (purposely or otherwise), and if Rayner had tried in any way to brazen this out, I would be writing something far harsher today.
Yet, I keep finding myself circling back to the question of proportion - a £40k stamp duty error is serious, yes, but it’s hardly on the same scale as the billions of pounds that were funnelled to donors, friends and pub landlords during the COVID PPE wholesale bonanza, or a PM misleading parliament about lockdown parties. There’s an asymmetry here that’s completely madenning - minor infractions can end very promising careers, while systemic corruption and negligence… waved away as yesterday’s news.
This is why I feel so conflicted here. While Rayner has absolutely done the right thing in the narrow sense - she’s shown accountability in a way that’s almost completely alien to Westminster - but the system around her remains frustratingly skewed. We punish individuals, especially women, and especially women who don’t come from the right background, while we’re happy to let big-ticket items of outright rot let our politics fester completely untouched.
And all of this is happening at a truly awful time for Labour as a whole - at the start of the week, the PM tried to project an image of competent order with a reshuffle that was dull, but purposeful. Today, he has lost his Deputy PM and the Deputy Party Leader in one fell stroke, and the story has instantly turned around into one of chaos. It feels like Labour keeps promising to be the grown ups in the room, but grown ups are supposed to control the narrative, aren’t they?
The other angry snake in the sack is the fact that I can already sense Farage rubbing his hands in glee - right on the first day of his party conference. He can turn up on stage, day one, and proclaim that “Labour Are All The Same”, while happily glossing over the headlines in the Guardian today of him using his company to reduce his tax take. This, for a populist movement that feeds on a heady mix of cynicism and grievance is manna sent straight from heavenly kitchens, and the longer Labour allows itself to be buffeted by scandal after unnecessary scandal, the more it risks reinforcing that exact corrosive idea of Reform’s that they’re the only option and that no one else can be trusted.
The last point to make on this is that Labour has today lost a juggernaut in politics. Rayner was not perfect, but she was authentic. Her worker’s right package, one of the few Labour policies I’ve been staunchly behind, was the one of the indicators in my mind that Labour had not entirely forgotten what it’s meant to stand for. That agenda risks now being overshadowed, and without Rayner’s voice to push it forward, I’m genuinely worried it might fade away altogether.
So yes, I’m disappointed. Deeply so. Angela Rayner should have paid the tax she owed and her resignation is a real blow - to the Labour Party, to working-class representation in politics and on a personal level to people like me who saw her as a rare, unfiltered and authentic presence in politics. But, I’m also proud. She did what so many before her didn’t, or wouldn’t, or couldn’t - she’s owned her mistake, faced the consequences, and walked. That does not absolve her - but it does set her apart.
And that’s the paradox I’m left with going into this weekend - sadness at losing her voice, pride in the way she handled the situation and frustrated at the double standards, with a measure of fear for what comes next.
I’m so sad and angry about this.
Your piece sums it up completely Bear.
She didn’t deserve the feeding frenzy. At least she showed some dignity in the face of massive misogyny and hypocrisy
Perfect if sadly correct post. If only Starmer would take it as a sign that they need to take the gloves off both policy wise and personality wise