Angela rayner

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Housebuilding’s in crisis? Bring back Angela Rayner!

Barely noticed amid all the other bad news and political shenanigans, there’s a slump in UK housebuilding that makes Labour’s promise of 1.5 million new homes within this parliament not just ‘stretching’, as the departed minister Angela Rayner called it, but a Truman Show fantasy of utopian suburbs that will never exist. Glenigan, a data provider for the construction industry, reports that residential ‘main contract awards’ in the three months to the end of August were down 44 per cent on last year and detailed planning permissions down 42 per cent. In London, only 2,158 new homes – a tiny fraction of anyone’s target or expectation – were started in

Thursday

Charles Moore

Reform’s success is far from set in stone

The current ‘Britain is on a knife edge’ mood is understandable. Our discontents are great and Sir Keir Starmer’s government is even more incompetent and divided than we critics expected. But do not forget how the British system works. We are not like France, paralysed because its executive president can, constitutionally, hold out until 2027, even though his governments last only for months. The tired phrase ‘overwhelming majority’ has meaning. Labour can overwhelm all parliamentary opposition. It may find it harder to overwhelm internal opposition, but an early general election remains most unlikely, since MPs do not demand an election if they think they will lose their seats. Labour can

Peter Jones

Angela Rayner and the ancient question of ‘good judgment’

Angela Rayner has returned to the back benches because, as housing secretary, she failed to follow the rules relating to stamp duty on a flat she had bought. Athenians were extremely proud of their citizen-led Assembly and did not take kindly to sub-standard officials. Plato constructed a dialogue (c. 430 bc) between Socrates and the controversial sophist Protagoras, who claimed that anyone taught by him would be a success in public and private life. Socrates challenged this claim. He pointed out that, when the democratic assembly of male citizens met to discuss technical matters (e.g. ship-building), they listened to those who actually had experience of building ships and shouted down

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Angela Rayner resigns, Poland downs Russian drones and Israel bombs Qatar

Home The government shuddered when Angela Rayner resigned as housing secretary, deputy prime minister and deputy leader of the Labour party after being found to have breached the ministerial code by Sir Laurie Magnus, the independent adviser on ministerial standards. He said she had followed advice from a legal firm when not paying enough stamp duty on her new flat in Hove, but ignored a recommendation to seek expert tax advice. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, called her ‘the living embodiment of social mobility’. He then threw himself into a great big cabinet shuffle, in which Yvette Cooper became Foreign Secretary and was replaced as Home Secretary by Shabana

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The misplaced sympathy for Angela Rayner

One evening last week I came home, flipped on the TV and saw on the news what must surely be a eulogy for some sainted figure who had been taken from us prematurely, such was the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Mother Teresa, I wondered? Isn’t she dead already? Only as I sat down with my cup of tea and saw a photograph of a woman with what looked like a dead fox on her head did I realise that the lamenting was on behalf of Our Blessed Lady of the Ginger Growler and the Vapes who had, apparently, resigned. It would not have surprised me, from the tone

Dot Wordsworth

Is Angela Rayner ‘humble’?

Just before the earth opened up, Sir Keir Starmer said of his deputy: ‘Angela came from a very humble background, battled all sorts of challenges along the way, and there she is proudly.’ We all know what pride comes before. Humble seemed a genteel word to use. Deprived would have sounded harsh; poor too Victorian; working-class too Your Party. Anyway, the humble background had to be thrown off. Hers was not the professed outlook of the writhing Uriah Heep (seen as a ‘red-headed animal’ by David Copperfield). ‘“Be umble, Uriah,” says father to me, “and you’ll get on. It was what was always being dinned into you and me at

Friday

Julie Burchill

My neighbour Angela Rayner and the lure of the Hove-eoisie

The flat in Hove which Angela Rayner infamously purchased is literally two streets and five minutes’ walk from my place, if I could walk. When I was planning to buy an apartment shortly into the new century, I looked at one in that street and thought: ‘Whoah – that’s a bit steep!’ I’d just sold my gaff to a developer for £1.5 million, so that gives one some perspective on how expensive my ’hood has become, having once been a boring outpost of Brighton. In the end, I decided I preferred Art Deco to Regency – but Mrs Rayner is obviously far classier than me. It’s telling that Ange has

James Heale James Heale

Reaction from Reform as Rayner resigns

17 min listen

Angela Rayner has resigned following the ethics probe into her tax affairs. What impact will this have on Starmer’s government? And does this hinder her chances of succeeding Starmer one day? The Coffee House Shots team react live from day one of the Reform party conference, which is taking place in Birmingham. What’s the mood in the conference hall? And, after Nadine Dorries joined Reform last night, could more former Conservatives follow? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Megan McElroy.

Thursday

Tim Shipman

Can Rayner survive tax row?

16 min listen

24 hours after Angela Rayner admitted underpaying tax, the pressure remains on the deputy prime minister as Westminster now waits the outcome of the probe by the Prime Minister’s standards adviser. The Spectator’s political editor Tim Shipman and the Sunday Times’s Whitehall editor Gabriel Pogrund join Patrick Gibbons to discuss whether Rayner can retain her briefs. As Gabriel points out, regardless of the outcome of the ethics probe, Rayner was seen as Labour’s ‘sleaze-buster in chief’. So how damaging is this to ‘brand Ang’? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Keir Starmer’s reshuffle, Graham Linehan’s arrest and get ready for Storm Wubbo

Home Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, told the Commons that new applications for refugee family reunion visas would be suspended. She later said in a radio interview: ‘I have St George’s bunting. I also have Union Jack bunting.’ An injunction stopping the Bell Hotel, Epping, from housing asylum seekers was overturned by the Court of Appeal. Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, and Mohammad Kabir, 23, reported to be Afghan asylum seekers, pleaded not guilty to charges in connection with the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton on 22 July. Only 56 migrants arrived in England in small boats in the seven days to 1 September. Tommy Robinson, the right-wing agitator, faced

Wednesday

Tim Shipman

PMQs: Rayner defended as Badenoch flops

17 min listen

Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch faced off in the first Prime Minister’s Questions following summer recess. With the date of the Budget announced that morning, the economy was expected to dominate – which it did, to the surprise of most MPs, who expected Badenoch to attack over the Angela Rayner tax row. The deputy prime minister had admitted that morning she underpaid stamp duty on her flat in Hove. The leader of the opposition did question Starmer on it initially, but as political editor Tim Shipman says she more than missed an open goal. Tim joins Isabel Hardman and Lucy Dunn to discuss how damaging the row is for Rayner

Saturday

James Heale

Why Angela Rayner is so iconic

17 min listen

The Daily Telegraph have run a story this week that Angela Rayner may have dodged stamp duty on her second home. But beyond the story, its the photos of the Deputy Prime Minister on the beach at Hove – drinking and vaping – that went viral. Christian Calgie, senior political correspondent for the Daily Express, joins James Heale to unpack the story and the wider questions it raises for British politics, but also to discuss Rayner herself. Could ‘teflon Ang’ turn around the Labour Party’s fortunes? And why do so many people – including many Tories – like her so much? Produced by Megan McElroy and Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Angela Rayner and the spite of Labour

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

The Spectator

Is Angela Rayner pushing up house prices?

By George There is a popular movement to fly St George’s flags from lampposts. The St George Cross was used as an emblem of Henry II of England and Philip II of France during the Third Crusade in 1189. From 1218 it was used as the flag of Genoa, and in 1348 became a flag used by the English royal family. Some others using it today: — Georgia: national flag incorporates a large St George’s Cross with a smaller one in each quadrant; Sardinia: St George’s cross with a Moor’s head in each quadrant; Barcelona: St George’s crosses in two quadrants, with stripes in the other; naval flags of Bahamas,

Monday

Sam Leith

Angela Rayner’s not-so-scandalous ‘third home’

Angela Rayner, it’s reported, has bought a ‘third home’. The three-bedroom seaside flat on the south coast that she has just acquired for a sum slightly more than £700,000 adds, the Mail on Sunday reports excitedly, to her ‘burgeoning property empire’. Pre-burgeoning, be it noted, her property empire consisted of a single house in her constituency of Ashton-under-Lyne. The Candy Brothers, even post-burgeoning, she is not. Papers get to call it a ‘third home’ because she has the use of a ministerial apartment – ‘grace and favour’, obviously, to make it sound extra posh – in Westminster, but she’s not exactly going to be flipping the place in Admiralty House

Thursday

Oscar Edmondson

The unstoppable Angela Rayner

14 min listen

There is the small matter of the Macron–Starmer press conference today, at which the Prime Minister will hope to announce a new migration deal with France. But we thought we would dedicate today’s podcast to Angela Rayner, with some MPs thinking that the answer to Labour’s woes could be to ‘give it Ange until the end of the season’. As Tim Shipman reports in the magazine, she has undergone quite the political transformation – keeping her head down and away from incoming fire. Downing Street is taking her increasingly seriously. Is she the new John Prescott – or even the next Labour leader? Also on the podcast today: Jake Berry,

Tim Shipman

The reign of Rayner

Angela Rayner declined an invitation to a hen do last weekend where the entertainment included axe-throwing. ‘She was worried about photos,’ says one attendee. The Deputy Prime Minister had to see a family member instead, but a close ally admits: ‘She is more careful about attracting that sort of publicity than she used to be.’ Robbed as we are of the sight of Rayner waving an axe around when the Prime Minister is suffering his worst weeks in Downing Street, it is tempting to ask, as Metternich didn’t quite say of Talleyrand: ‘What did she mean by that?’ It’s a far cry from the days when she screamed that the

Thursday

James Heale

The rise of the Red Queen

‘All Labour prime ministers go gaga for the Queen,’ sighed Cherie Blair, played by Helen McCrory, in the 2006 film about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Her words were fictitious but the sentiment is real. From Ramsay MacDonald to Harold Wilson, left-wing prime ministers invariably end up as royalists. The current cabinet is no exception: former republicans such as Lisa Nandy have been charmed by Charles III. Even Keir Starmer – who once boasted on camera that he ‘often used to propose the abolition of the monarchy’ – is said to have a warm relationship with the King. Yet geniality is only one reason why Labour loves the

Thursday

Roger Alton

Angela Rayner’s war on Britain’s playing fields

With the world on fire – not to mention large swathes of the North Sea – it is understandable that some of the scurvier implications of Angela Rayner’s stonking planning bill, aimed at streamlining all development, from roads and power stations to housing, might have gone unnoticed. Which is a pity, because it’s not very pretty. To make sure everything goes swimmingly, it seems that those objecting to any developments too much will have to keep their trap shut. Among the bodies that won’t have to be consulted any more is an outfit called Sport England, which may have its faults but is dedicated to promoting grassroots sport. Now, of

Thursday

Toby Young

The trouble with criminalising ‘Islamophobia’

When I first heard that Angela Rayner had been tasked with creating an advisory council that will draw up an official definition of ‘Islamophobia’, I assumed it was another poisoned chalice handed to her by No. 10, particularly as Dominic Grieve has been suggested as the chair. Is that the same Dominic Grieve who was leader of the awkward squad in the Commons and spent three years doing everything in his power to thwart Brexit? He’s bound to make the Deputy Prime Minister’s life just as miserable as he made Theresa May’s. If I wanted to see Rayner off as a leadership challenger, this is precisely the kind of crap