It’s an ignominious end to Angela Rayner’s career as Keir Starmer’s Deputy Prime Minister — and his Housing Secretary. The politician resigned from her posts on Friday 5 September over her failure to pay the correct amount of stamp duty on a flat by the sea. She spent her summer holiday there in Hove, but as autumn arrived it became a political albatross around her neck. Her political career is in tatters over a £40,000 “inadvertently” dodged tax payment.
“I accept that I did not meet the highest standards in relation to my recent property purchase,” she wrote in her resignation letter to the Prime Minister. “I deeply regret my decision to not seek additional specialist tax advice given my position as both Housing Secretary and my complex family arrangements.” Starmer responded with a handwritten note — an interestingly intimate gesture given the pair’s sometimes fraught political relationship.
“Although I believe you have reached the right decision, it’s a decision which I know is very painful for you,” the Prime Minister penned in blue ink. “I am very sad to be losing you,” he continued. “You have been a trusted colleague and a true friend for many years.”
‘The code was breached’
Rayner may have jumped before she was pushed, but her fate was sealed when Government ethics advisor Sir Laurie Magnus ruled she had breached the ministerial code.
Ultimately, he said, Rayner failed to take specialist advice on the tricky financial and familial situation she was in. Rayner had sold her 25 per cent share in the family home in her constituency she shares with her ex-husband, taking her name off of the deed. But it remained her primary address, although held in trust from one of her sons, Charlie, who was born extremely prematurely and was left with lifelong disabilities. The exes chose to “nest” — an arrangement where divorced parents elect to switch off between staying in the family home to maintain stability for their offspring.
Rayner presumed that the £800,000 Hove flat could then be her primary residence for stamp duty purposes; the tax rate differs depending on whether a property is your primary home or an additional one. But while Rayner had received advice indicating she was eligible for the lower rate, Sir Magnus ruled that she should have sought more specialist advice as home’s held in trust are factored in differently.
“It is a sad reflection of the almost intolerable pressures that can face prominent politicians in protecting the privacy of their families,” said Sir Magnus.
Reducing child poverty will be the ‘number one priority’ for a Labour Government, Angela Rayner said in 2023 (James Manning/PA)
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Rayner’s own personal and political mythology always hinged on her very humble beginnings and a “pretty horrifying” childhood. In her resignation letter she exalted her journey from “a teenage mum from a council estate in Stockport to serve as the highest level of government”. Hers was, by all accounts, an upbringing full of hardship.
Born in 1980 in the Greater Manchester town to two unemployed parents living on a deprived social housing estate, she recalls having to visit her grandmother’s every Sunday just to take turns for a hot bath. The family survived on fortnightly giro cheques — the old government-issued paper welfare payments — and school uniforms were bought from charity shops.
Her father, according to reports, was often absent from the family’s cold and threadbare council flat. Rayner herself described him as “cruel” and “pretty terrifying” in a 2021 interview with The Times. When nightmares caused her to wet the bed she would hide the sodden sheets, only to be chastised by him for “being frightened and silly”.
Rayner’s mother was functionally illiterate and lived with bipolar and depression. The politician has told stories of being served shaving cream on jelly and tins of dog food instead of steak because her mum could only go by the pictures on tins. The three siblings received little care and affection. “We were feral,” said Rayner. “She wasn’t able to read with us, so we were behind.” Her mother was occasionally sectioned and made several suicide attempts. By 10, Rayner had became her parent’s carer, bathing her before school and sleeping at the end of her bed to try and stop her from hurting herself in the night.
The politician credits her current glamorous appearance — regular blow-dries for her auburn tresses and an enviable shoe collection — to the deprivation of her childhood, where she was sent to school with unbrushed hair and steel-toe boots and bullied for it.
Angela Rayner the Shadow Secretary of State for Education addresses the audience during a climate emergency rally in 2019
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‘People underestimate me’
By 16, Rayner was pregnant and her father had thrown her out of the family home. With no GCSE qualifications, she trained in social care and worked for the council. As a teenage single mother she credited Sure Start — the now-defunct family service introduced under New Labour — for supporting her with her first son Ryan. It was at a Sure Start nursery, she said, that she was taught it was important to hug her child rather than simply provide for his physical needs.
Her political awakening came when she joined trade union Unison, rising to become elected as a senior official. She joined the Labour party, and a 2012 Guardian profile of her as the Stockport branch secretary pictured her in office filled with newspaper clippings of Rayner posing with left-wing luminaries including Gordan Brown and Ed Miliband. “People underestimate me too,” she said. “I’m a pretty young woman, lots of red hair, and everyone expects me to be stupid when I walk into a meeting for the first time. I’m not stupid and most people know that now, but I still like to be underestimated because it gives me an edge. It gives me a bit of stealth.”
Rayner stood for prospective parliamentary candidate for her constituency of Ashton-under-Lyme in 2014, and was elected as their MP in he 2015 General Election. “A care worker becoming a Member of Parliament, now that’s real aspiration for you,” she said in her maiden speech. “Perhaps, too, I’m the only member of the House who at the age of 16 and pregnant I was told, on no uncertain terms, I would never amount to anything.” She went on to be re-elected in both the 2019 and 2024 general elections.
Angela Rayner (left) with then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (Ben Birchall/PA)
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From Corbyn years to Starmer drama
In 2016 Jeremy Corbyn was the leader of the Labour Party and Britain had voted for Brexit. Several MPs resigned from Corbyn’s shadow cabinet over what had been perceived as Corbyn’s reluctance to give full-throated support to the failed Remain campaign. Rayner was appointed to the position of shadow Education Secretary. Within the party, whispers began circulating that she could be their future leader one day.
Corbyn had been ousted from the leadership by 2020, but Rayner didn’t’ stand for the position. Instead, she backed Rebecca Long-Bailey, who lost to Keir Starmer. Rayner went for the deputy role instead, winning comfortably, but her relationship with Starmer was not smooth sailing at the outset. Sir Keir booted her from the role of party chairwoman after a series of Labour losses in the 2021 by-elections. Her supporters were incensed, feeling the party’s most senior woman had been scapegoated. “This isn’t what taking responsibility looks like, sacking a northern working class woman!” one former staffer briefed to PoliticsHome. Starmer relented and made Rayner Shadow First Secretary of State, amongst other titles.
The saga will prompt fresh fears over the relationship between Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner (Gareth Fuller/PA)
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The Tory knives were out for Angela in the run up to the 2024 general election — and her housing and tax arrangements were at the centre of it. Tory peer Lord Ashcroft published an unauthorised biography of Rayner, which cast aspersions on her tax arrangements around the sale of her ex-council flat. Rayner had purchased under the right-to-buy scheme in 2007, well before she became an MP. After marrying fellow Unison official Mark Rayner in 2010 she sold the property for £48,500 more than she paid for it and didn’t pay Capital Gains Tax (CPT). Rayner maintained that, as it was her only home at the time, she was exempt and “didn’t have an accountant” at the time. Conservative deputy chairman James Daly requested the Greater Manchester Police investigate Rayner over whether her marriage meant she should have paid CPT. The police ultimately ruled that Rayner had committed no offence, and Starmer accused the Tories of “desperate tactics” and “smearing a working-class woman”.
Just weeks later the Conservatives were routed by Labour and Rayner ascended to Deputy Prime Minister under the Starmer leadership. But 14 months into their reign, Rayner resigned over another property scandal and Starmer is left to fill the gaps in his Cabinet.
