Angela Rayner’s back, returning last week to serve as Andy Burnham’s Secretary of Housing, Communities and Local Government (and as a bit of a fashion icon – the new fringe, square glasses and bouclé jacket didn’t go unnoticed).
It’s a far cry from last September, when she was forced to resign from cabinet and from her role as deputy prime minister after it was found that she hadn’t paid the correct stamp duty on her £800,000 Hove flat.
The fallout of this oversight – which centred on tax affairs, but soon rippled out to reach details of a settlement from the NHS awarded to her disabled son – was the prime minister’s ethics adviser’s finding she hadn’t upheld the highest standards of conduct.
After a “really difficult” situation, as Rayner now refers to it, she left the role, stating in her resignation letter, addressed to Sir Keir Starmer, that she “deeply” regretted not getting more advice on her tax situation, but that “I will continue to serve you, our country and the party and movement I love in the weeks, months and years ahead.”
Now, the Prime Minister may have changed, but what has Rayner been up to during her 10 months away from the frontbenches, and how has that prepared her for what comes next?
Earning back that £40,000
At its core, the problem was that Rayner owed the taxman £40,000.
And yet, by May, she told The Guardian that HMRC found no deliberate wrongdoing or carelessness over her tax affairs and she had settled the bill. But how does anyone, especially someone who’d just bought an £800,000 flat and was on a 40 per cent pay cut, cobble together that kind of dosh?
Well, the MP went on a speaking tour. She didn’t charge a penny for her appearance at the Communication Workers’ Union conference in May, where she thanked its members for shaping the Employment Rights Act. “It’s clear – there is no way we would have had the New Deal for Workers campaign in law without the affiliated union.”
But between February and June, she netted £74,000 for delivering speeches for the likes of the Management Consultancies Association, the Propertymark conference, the bank BNP Paribas and the financial services firm Coex Partners.
This is all according to the members’ register of interests, which also shows that she’s given £15,000 of speakers’ fees to various charities.
After tax, these events alone would’ve cleared just over £40,000. But she also scored herself a £61,500 book advance to write a memoir for Vintage Books. Its publication date has been pushed back due to her return to Government, but expect the royalties to roll in when the book does land.
Post-party holiday
Now that she’s back in Government, there are calls for Rayner to forfeit the £16,876 exit money given on her departure.
Three years ago, in response to PA Media finding that various Conservative ministers had, between them, accrued nearly half a million pounds in exit payments, Rayner criticised them for accepting the “enormous payoff[s]”, saying: “At a time when people up and down the country are struggling to pay their mortgages and put food on the table, it shows a staggering lack of shame for them to accept this money”.
And now James Cleverly, Shadow housing secretary, is calling for Rayner to give back her payment, telling the Telegraph: “She pocketed a £17,000 reward courtesy of the taxpayer, and now she’s got her old job back… Rayner should hand back the cash.”
Rayner’s justification was that she was out of Government for a whole 10 months; meanwhile, some Conservatives were being paid after “a revolving door after 40-odd days” as part of the “chaos” of having “multiple prime ministers” – indeed, Liz Truss’s cabinet lasted mere weeks.
Rayner is not going to return the money, but the Westminster rumours that she spent it all on a holiday for her staff – who lost her job when she quit – are not true, a source close to her tells The i Paper. Instead, after 10 years as a frontbench MP, rather than go to Labour party conference, she went on her own holiday, while her staff went on their own “self-funded” trips away.
That source also tells The i Paper: “Obviously she was out of government for nearly a year”, and when she pointed out a few years ago that other ministers should forfeit their exit pay, “there were quite a few ministers who resigned around that time who were back within a few weeks.”
The former deputy prime minister has learned plenty about the state of the world through her family, too. She has been supporting her 29-year-old son and his young family (Photo: Ryan Jenkinson/Getty)Working on the backbenches
Rayner’s departure from Government marked the end of a 10-year stint on the frontbenches.
With no brief other than to work for her constituents, she headed back to Ashton-under-Lyne, just outside of Manchester. And the more time she spent there, the more impetus she had to get back into power.
She told the BBC last week: “The change that we promised at the election wasn’t happening quick enough. I could see that… as I was spending more time in my constituency”
This period, where she “got more time to meet my constituents”, was one of “reflection” where she realised “we need to do things properly quickly and really drive that change forward, because people are really frustrated with the cost of living and just feeling like life is just really hard… people wanted a bit of hope”.
She said that it’s clear “people [are] not able to get on in life”, because “you pick up the phone to speak to a company and it takes hours” and “getting an appointment with your GP, it’s like Hunger Games at 8:30 in the morning”.
Family support
Rayner has learned plenty about the state of the world through her family, too. She has been supporting her 29-year-old son and his young family (he has an eight-year-old) and co-parenting two teenage sons – one of whom is registered blind and has learning difficulties – with her ex-husband, Mark Rayner.
She also shares her Hove home with Sam Tarry, her boyfriend of four years who used to be a Labour MP for Ilford South and is now a political advisor at Northpoint Strategy, a political and communications consultancy in London.
This May, she told The Rest Is Politics that supporting her 29-year-old son by acting as a guarantor for his rental property has opened her eyes more to the plight of Gen Z workers. She said: “He’s got no opportunity at the moment to buy a property. He works really long hours. He provides for his family. He’s on a very low income. It’s really difficult for him.”
To her, the psychology of working adults having to go to the bank of mum and dad is “not a system that we should be enduring at the moment… [it has] a long drag on the economy, I think [it has] a long drag on our wellbeing as a country.”
Getting personal
In between all of this, Rayner’s been working on herself, to a degree. In February, her haircut did numbers on TikTok after her hairdresser uploaded the secrets to her copper locks there. And showing serious range, by May, she was pictured on a Tough Mudder course, raising funds for SEND-friendly playground facilities. Try as The i Paper has, there was no record of Rayner’s time around the course.
Meanwhile, as her government department is reportedly reviewing tax reliefs on vape shops and other businesses that lack a positive contribution to communities, the woman who has been affectionately nicknamed “the vape dragon” by her children refuses to address rumours that she has given up vaping, insisting: “The public, they don’t care whether I’m vaping or not.”
What next?
There was a time not very long ago when Rayner was potentially lining up a leadership bid. Late last year, she assured The Guardian that she had “not gone away” and by March, in a speech in a pub crammed full of Labour activists, she warned that the party was “running out of time” and that too often the Government had “represented the establishment, not working people.”
She never quite took it all the way to a leadership contest, though, and if she did ever have her heart set on the top job, she’s made her peace with her current billing, telling the BBC that when she saw the new Prime Minister’s first speech: “I was incredibly proud to see Andy speak from the heart.”
Despite it being summer recess, she is already setting out policy positions. No rent controls, but yes to building more council houses. No to rough sleeping, yes to devolution. Her vigour is clear, as she told the BBC: “I’m honoured to come back and play my role; I’ve got unfinished business.”
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