When you’re in a hole, who gonna call? David Lammy! Yes, the Shadow Foreign Secretary was out on the airwaves this morning, chivalrously, if quixotically, riding to the rescue of his under-fire deputy leader. Angela Rayner is facing claims she may have wrongly avoided capital gains tax and broken electoral law, with the Mail on Sunday today publishing photos of her describing as ‘home’ a different property from the one she told the authorities was her principal residence. Whoops!
So out went brave Lammy, the Talleyrand of Tottenham, to dodge and dissemble as best he can. He first appeared on the BBC, telling Laura Kuenssberg that Rayner ‘has a blended family like millions of Britons’ and asking ‘Why do we land on this northern woman?’ Steerpike would gently point out to Lammy that tax rules in the north of England are just the same as in the south and that the ‘millions’ of Britons living in such ‘blended families’ don’t end up facing questions over whether they broke electoral law…
Having insisted that ‘there’s nothing new in this story’ (wrong) Lammy then went on Sky News where presenter Sir Trevor Phillips asked the obvious question: ‘If she’s had this advice, why doesn’t she publish it?’ noting that ‘A year ago she complained that Mr Sunak had published his tax returns as Labour demanded “only after much delay”. On Thursday she said “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” He did, why doesn’t she just get on with it and publish the advice if she’s had it?’
Lammy’s response bordered on the shameless, explicitly stating that Labour shouldn’t be held to that same standard, because they are not yet the party of government. He told Phillips: ‘Look, I think there’s a different arrangement and expectation for the Prime Minister than there is in this context – we’re not yet in government.’
As Nixon might have said: ‘When the opposition does it, that means that it is not illegal’.
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