Whataboutery won't get Labour far as a defence

When it became obvious that Labour were going to win a general election in 2024 or 2025, commentators assumed that Keir Starmer would be keen to show how different his government and party were from the Conservative Bacchanalia that had gone before.

Woe betide the first Labour backbencher to be found doing something that appears a little dodgy, the commentators said. They would be out on their ear, as Starmer showed he wasn't going to tolerate any misbehaviour.

It hasn't turned out like that. Nothing happened when, to his shock, the poor condition of flats let by the new Labour MP Jas Athwal was revealed.

And now we have Angela Rayner defending accepting a free holiday in New York because she has declared it and didn't break any rules.

I like Angela Rayner, not least because it's such a change to have a Northern and working-class voice in the cabinet, but this won't do. 

Most voters earn a lot less than Rayner now does and manage to pay for their own holidays. Why should she be any different, particularly when the risk of someone buying undue influence over a senior politician are clear? (I'm sure Lord Alli has acted from generous motives, but not everyone is so public spirited.)

If such a holiday is within the rules, then the rules must change. But rich people do like receiving perks.

The Labour reaction to this news story, and to similar ones like that on Starmer's new wardrobe, has been to say the Tories were worse.

The Tories were worse - much worse - but whataboutery won't get Labour far as a defence when voters were led to expect they would be different.

And, deep down, I have a fear that Keir Starmer has more in common with Boris Johnson than we imagined. He's been very good at saying what people want to hear - a gift that deserted him as soon as he became prime minister - but does he have any strong political beliefs of his own?

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

In defence of Angela Rayner

I’m going to defend Angela here. So what she struggled at exams. She is smart and well deserves her position. And if you took a minute to see what she overcame you’d be all the more impressed. We don’t always agree. But she has my respect. Shame on you. https://t.co/bA5zYAGEKV

— Layla Moran 🔶 🏳️‍🌈 (@LaylaMoran) September 23, 2019

I'm with Layla on this one.

Education and educational achievement are things to be celebrated, but how you do at school can be as much a measure of your home background as how bright you are.

That's one reason I am so pleased that Layla has placed such a strong emphasis on adult learning as Liberal Democrat education spokesperson.

And there comes an age (with most of us it is about 19) when we stop thinking how you do in school examinations matters much. Churchill used to exaggerate how hopeless he had been at Harrow because he thought it gave him kudos.

I had some small experience myself of home background affecting my performance at school. As I wrote back in 2005:

When I was in the early years of secondary school, geography lessons seemed to be dominated by middle-class girls whose families encouraged them to write to foreign embassies for information about the countries we were discussing. 

Being male and coming from a one-parent family with a busy working mother, I was never going to compete with them. (And if you want real street cred, I got free school dinners.)

One reason for recalling this today is that I discovered three years later that one of those middle-class girls was a young Allison Pearson.

Angela Rayner thinks the Tories are "selling off" the green belt

The gov't should not be selling off our green belt to private developers;we need low cost housing built with the right public infrastructure

— Angela Rayner MP (@AngelaRayner) February 7, 2017

We know Richard Burgon is a laughing stock, but Angela Rayner has been getting good notices - at least from her colleagues.

So how to explain this tweet she sent today?

The government, of course, cannot sell off the green belt because it does not own it. The debate is about whether local authorities should be allowed or compelled to grant developers permission to build on it.

I think we are entitled to expect a member of the shadow cabinet to have grasped that.

But then I am puzzled by all the talk in the media about local authorities being forced to sell their land.

Are local authorities really sitting on large land holding? Maybe large authorities are, but when I was a councillor in a rural district 30 years ago we owned very little land even then.

I suspect a lot of journalists don't understand this debate either