(Adnkronos) – Angela Rayner has resigned as British Deputy Prime Minister and Labour’s number two following the scandal that involved her for failing to pay the correct amount of tax on her second home.
Rayner herself had self-reported to the British government’s ethics advisor, confirming that she had to pay the additional amount, which experts estimated at around £40,000 (approximately €46,000), highlighting that she had mistakenly applied the lower rate because she had classified the apartment in Hove, part of the coastal town of Brighton, as her only property, despite often residing with her children in the family home in Ashton, near Manchester.
The resulting investigation by the government’s independent advisor was delivered to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who initially defended her, this morning, shortly before Rayner announced her resignation. The affair represents a severe blow to the prime minister, writes the Guardian, describing Rayner as “one of his most authentic and strongest working-class voices” in the Labour government, at a time when he is struggling to speak to his traditional electorate and is losing ground in the polls to Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s hard-right party.
A few months before purchasing the £800,000 (approximately €923,000) house in Hove, Rayner had transferred her share of the Ashton house to a trust established in 2020 to manage a payment to one of her children, permanently disabled following an accident at birth, the British newspaper points out. Following the revelations, Rayner has been accused of hypocrisy, especially in view of a likely increase in property taxes in the next budget law, which the government will present in the autumn. In recent days, the Hove house has been vandalized with insults and writings such as “tax evader”.
