Monday, May 13, 2024

The Tories' Angela Rayner obsession has come back to bite them


It was predictable - indeed, I remember retweeting someone who predicted it - that the Mail's pursuit of Angela Rayner over her supposed failure to pay capital gains tax would rebound on the Conservatives.

That's because Conservative MPs own more houses than Labour MPs and may be fonder of baroque ways of avoiding tax.

And, sure enough, here is a report from today's Mirror:

Tories making a lot of noise about Angela Rayner and capital gains tax are less vocal when it comes to the profits their own MPs have made from selling second homes.

Four who have raked in £5.4million between them ­from flogging houses funded by the public have repeatedly declined to reveal if they paid any tax on the profits they made. The Tories were accused of ­hypocrisy after pushing for police to probe deputy Labour leader Ms Rayner over a £48,000 profit she made selling a former council house before she became an MP and an alleged capital gains tax bill of a mere £1,500.

The party did not respond to Mirror requests to comment on our ­investigation into whether David Tredinnick, Eleanor Laing, Shailesh Vara and Maria Miller paid capital gains tax on second homes they sold.

No doubt the Labour Party looks forward to this being an issue at the coming general election

1 comment:

Phil Beesley said...

Not Calder's Third Law of politics again? That the political adviser's cunning ploy turns out to be one of Baldrick's?