Nothing to see here........

Let's just move on eh?

By Lorna Smyth (https://www.facebook.com/lornydiddle)

What an absolutely incredible coincidence!

On the very day Labour leadership challenges can officially go in, Angela Rayner suddenly gets the all clear from HMRC over her tax affairs. No penalty. No finding of deliberate wrongdoing. Just quietly pay the £40,000 in stamp duty that should have been paid and the path is suddenly cleared for a potential leadership run.

And we’re all supposed to believe the timing means absolutely nothing.

Maybe it is a coincidence. Westminster is full of them. Funny how these things always seem to land at the most politically convenient moment possible.
This is also the same Angela Rayner whose defenders spent months screaming misogyny anytime anyone dared ask a simple question about whether a senior politician had paid the correct tax. As I said last year, scrutiny is not sexism. Rayner is the Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Minister, not some powerless victim being picked on unfairly. If ordinary people get questioned by the taxman, Cabinet ministers should expect exactly the same.

The idea that asking questions about tax affairs somehow amounts to hatred of women was cynical nonsense then and it looks even worse now.
And here’s the part ordinary working people will notice immediately.

If a plumber in Belfast, a self employed electrician in Manchester or a small business owner in Glasgow underpaid tens of thousands linked to property, would HMRC just say “you took reasonable care, pay it back and we’ll call it quits”?

Would they get headlines carefully emphasising they weren’t “tax dodging”?

Would the establishment rush to protect their reputation?

People know the answer instinctively.
That’s why this whole thing still stinks.

It stinks of a political class that always seems to land on its feet. It stinks of sleaze, insider protection and one rule for them and another for everyone else. Ordinary people get chased, threatened and squeezed dry over far smaller sums, while powerful politicians somehow emerge with carefully managed statements, conveniently timed clearances and their reputations neatly polished for the next leadership contest.

Maybe nothing illegal happened. Fine.

But millions of people will look at this and see exactly why trust in Westminster is collapsing. Arrogance. Greed. Political protection.

A governing class that increasingly looks like it believes itself above the law the rest of us live under every single day.