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UK Politics General Discussion

What will be the result of the UK’s General Election?

  • Conservative Majority

    Votes: 3 2.5%

  • Conversative Biggest Party in Hung Parliament

    Votes: 2 1.7%

  • Labour Majority

    Votes: 87 72.5%

  • Labour Biggest Party in Hung Parliament

    Votes: 28 23.3%

  • Other Result (Please specify in your post)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    120
  • Poll closed .
Not looking great for Rayner now the lawyers who she said advised her on the tax matters say that they just acted on the information she gave them and that she was advised that she should have sought expert advice beforehand:

metro.co.uk

Angela Rayner's lawyers say they are 'scapegoats' in stamp duty row

The row continues.
metro.co.uk metro.co.uk

It also doesn't look great ethically when it's being reported that she used funds from her disabled childs trust fund in her property dealings. Who even thinks about doing that anyway?
 
Apart from her position, she's presumably lost her "grace and favour" place in London. Plenty of people commute from Brighton & Hove, so should be no problem for her!

I think the glaring "smoking gun" is that she professed to getting expert tax advice from multiple sources - when in fact the advice was "we can't advise you, get a tax expert". Wonder if she'll now join Corbyn in the party "which shall not be named"? Perhaps the only place where she won't be considered toxic.
 
Smiley said:
Wonder if she'll now join Corbyn in the party "which shall not be named"? Perhaps the only place where she won't be considered toxic.
Click to expand...

The party that has yet to be named is, in part, being founded precisely as an alternative to revelations like this, so I very much doubt she has a future there. She still has earthy, working class credentials, so my best guess/advice to salvage her image would some sort of charitable sector or start-up CEO role.

Extremely daft of Starmer to have claimed his full confidence in her. Another complete misread of the room.
 
Angela Rayner is still a Labour MP, is she not? Couldn’t she just ride out the next couple of years in the backbenches and then potentially return to a Cabinet role at a later date?

There’s nothing stopping her running for the leadership if Starmer went, either. People think she’d be a very popular choice if she did go for the Labour leadership, particularly in the traditional Labour heartlands that are defecting to Reform in considerable numbers.
 
No return to cabinet IMHO. Tax-dodging (call it what you like, that's the smell) is a hard one to shrug off. I'll go with @Plastic Person idea of a charitable CEO

All this for £40k, or a couple of £k for proper tax advice. It's not a good look....
 
Incidentally, Rayner was definitely my favourite of the front bench Labour cabinet this past year, not that it’s a particularly high bar to clear. She was broadly popular with unions, business folk and working class voters. She didn’t completely vacate herself of a personality in order to get ahead. I wouldn’t go as far to say that I’m upset about it, but her profile is an unfortunate loss.
 
This is serious as rayner building plan was a key part of Labour's Strategy and I want it because there's no way I could buy a house right now
 
It probably won't make a difference as it would have been the people underneath her doing any of the actual work around trying to reform planning regs and all that. She was just the figurehead. I believe Steve Reed is her replacement and the plan will just continue under him. I still don't believe they would have met the 1.5 million homes target under her anyway and I don't believe that will change under this new housing secretary.

When you consider that (official) net immigration was around 430,000 people last year and was 800,000 the year before in an admittedly more unusual year due to Ukraine etc then I wouldn't get too excited about them trying to build 300,000 houses a year (that they're already failing on). They need to far exceed that number to have any kind of effect on the supply/demand imbalance and crazy home prices.
 
Matt N said:
Interestingly, the new leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, has called for Nigel Farage’s resignation due to the revelation that he has formed a limited company to receive his earnings from TV, meaning that he only pays corporation tax of 25% rather than income tax of 40%: https://inews.co.uk/news/green-party-leader-calls-for-farage-to-quit-over-tax-affairs-3903164
Click to expand...
Not defending him as I think he's a charlatan. But, whilst it may be morally objectionable, why have Labour and the Tories before them not shut down loopholes like this. It's not illegal and I doubt he's going to sack himself, so as long as his supporters don't get up in arms about it there's nothing to stop him. That's on our law-makers who keep these loop-holes open for whatever reason.
 
Did enjoy Farage getting a right old hammering at US Congress rather than doing his elected role though.

Loopholes will always be found. Its why the rich hire dodgy financial advisors who know exactly how to do it in a legal but immoral manner.
 
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Absolutely nothing wrong with setting up a company and paying the relevant tax. IR35 closed a lot of the loopholes. Who pays more tax than the need to????

As for the housebuilding target, it was always a flying pig. House BUILDERS decide how many to build, and no-one is going to flood the market and reduce profits to satisfy government demands. The only way to reduce house prices is to build social/subsidised housing on a massive scale, and no-one has the appetite for that.
 
The so-called housing crisis has been caused by successive governments allowing the population to increase at an unsustainable rate, while building has not kept up. Agree with the above in that the state needs to intervene, not just pledge useless mantras.
 
Smiley said:
... The only way to reduce house prices is to build social/subsidised housing on a massive scale, and no-one has the appetite for that.
Click to expand...
I do.
The good quality social housing stock should never have been sold off for votes.
Ever.
That was a major part in creating the massive division between rich and poor that is crippling our state right now.
Build lots of new state owned high quality homes now, built by a new generation of construction youth, on apprenticeships.
Paid for with progressive taxes on high earners.
Job done!
 
Tom said:
The so-called housing crisis has been caused by successive governments allowing the population to increase at an unsustainable rate, while building has not kept up. Agree with the above in that the state needs to intervene, not just pledge useless mantras.
Click to expand...
The housing crisis is primarily a result of people being able to purchase social housing stock from the council, at a substantial discount, whilst making it illegal for the council to reinvest funds from those sales in building new housing stock.

One of the greatest giveaways of state assets did benefit an entire generation, but it also started the course for successive generations to be increasingly worse off than their forebears.
 
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