As a snapshot of our country, you’ll be pressed to find anything quite so resonant as the one which depicts a leading member of our Skankerati sitting in an inflatable off the southern coast of the UK with tattoo and vape in attendance. There has been much debate of late about the very large numbers of other people bobbing about in the English Channel – and the possible value they might be to our benighted economy. We could ask the same question about Angela Rayner. On paper she is a huge cost to the Exchequer, one which would easily outstrip even a fairly successful Albanian drug dealer.
Henceforth, then, it would be unfair to call her Angela ‘Two Homes’ Rayner, because having bought a three-bedroom Victorian flat with a sea view in the debauched hell of Hove, she now has three homes. We pay for her grace-and-favour apartment in Admiralty House, as well as the council tax. Then she has the £650,000 pad in her constituency and now a flat in Hove, which sources close to the woman said she needed because her job requires her to be in and around London quite a lot. One might have thought that the Admiralty suite fitted that bill pretty well, being right in the middle of London, rather than a town 55 miles distant, but perhaps Ange hasn’t looked at a map recently. She certainly appears to be confused about where she lives, for she has not revealed which of the residences in her expanding property portfolio is her main home. She’s had that sort of problem before, hasn’t she? A certain forgetfulness about where she actually lives, and what properties are lived in by someone else entirely.
The reason her latest purchase provoked a bit of attention is that in the make-believe world of left-wing politics, people are not supposed to have second homes, let alone third homes. Having multiple residences denies to the poor their right to a home of their own. Of course this is the most arrant crap, but Labour believes it, or pretends to. So we might level the charge of hypocrisy against Rayner, for a start. Now, many people would like a nice second home with a sea view – I’ve already got one, by the way – but many will have been put off by Labour and Green and Lib Dem councils whacking up the council tax to double its appropriate rate in order to punish ‘lucky’ bastards who have too much money for their own good, or for the good of international socialism.
And then there is this: most people who yearn for a second home don’t have quite so many things paid for them by other people as Ange. This includes her computer, AirPods, phones, phone bills and council taxes, plus agreeable donations, such as the £800 freebie to listen to some bangin’ choons in Ibiza and Waheed Alli bunging her £3,000 to spend on clothes so that she might less closely resemble one of Catherine Tate’s more colourful creations, a project which has so far failed. Most people don’t get that kind of stuff. Most people have to, you know, pay for it all and then pay for quite a bit of Angela’s into the bargain. Cruel world, isn’t it?
The charge always levelled at Labour when these stories come to light is hypocrisy. But it’s more than that
Still, Angela has done well for herself and most normal people would not resent her for having a sea view bolthole on the outskirts of Sodom. It’s only people like Angela who resent that sort of thing, isn’t it? People like Angela and perhaps also like Rachel Reeves and David Lammy, both of whom receive rental income in excess of £10,000 per year: and yet, on paper once again, Labour’s not a big fan of landlords, is it? Or there’s former homelessness minister Rushanara Ali, forced to resign when she evicted tenants from one of her buy-to-let properties so she could hike the price up, in direct contravention of her party’s policy.
In a sensible society, one might commend Rayner for having dragged herself up to the position where she can afford a seaside third home. Just as one might praise Rushanara Ali not only for providing a home for renters, but also for looking after her own financial security. Or, in the case of Mad Mike Meacher, when he was around, quite exceptional financial security for his family: having divested himself of the opinion that owning more than one home was a crime against the working classes, he rented out nine.
And of course there’s much more. The extraordinarily pleased with herself Shami Chakrabarti railing against selective schools while sending her brat to the £18,000-per-year private and selective Dulwich College. Emily Thornberry opposing selective schools but bussing her kid out of the area so that she might attend one. Or Diane Abbott – there is always Diane Abbott – sending hers to a private school having based her entire political career on railing against such privileges.
The charge which is always levelled at Labour when these stories come to light is hypocrisy, then. And beyond all doubt these are hypocritical acts and we are right to mock the politicians, relentlessly, for them. But it is more than that. It is instead an acknowledgement that the party’s policies do not make the slightest bit of sense. They are gobbets of spite coughed up from an ideology which cannot possibly exist in the real world.
Event
Coffee House Shots Live: Can the Tories turn it around? – Manchester Special
Everything which Sir Keir Starmer wishes to do with the country is thwarted by the spite of his own policies. He would like to see a bit of growth in the economy – but the spite makes him drive out of the country the very people who make economies grow and the spite makes him hike up national insurance on the very companies who might make our economy grow. He would like to solve the housing crisis – but the spite makes him drive landlords out of the private rented sector so that there are far fewer low-cost homes to be rented out. And so he and Rayner instead make everything worse.
Hope she enjoys the new flat.
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