UK deputy PM Rayner quits: Here’s why!

LONDON: British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner resigned on Friday after admitting to underpaying property tax on a new home, a fresh blow to her boss, Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Rayner, 45, is the eighth, and most senior, ministerial departure from Starmer’s team, and the most damaging since the British leader offered her his full support when she was first accused of deliberately trying to avoid paying the correct tax rate.

Rayner said in her letter to Starmer, “I deeply regret my decision not to seek additional specialist tax advice… I take full responsibility for this mistake.”

Starmer responded by saying he was very sorry that his government’s time had come to an end in this way but that she had reached the right decision.

After Labour lost to populist Reform UK in the election, Starmer faces further challenges in trying to repair his authority and the image of his party, which has previously been accused of hypocrisy by critics for accepting expensive items from donors, including clothes and concert tickets.

Losing his deputy is particularly damaging, especially as Rayner, who rose from a working-class teenage mother to one of Britain’s most senior political positions, had managed to mediate between Labour’s left and centrist wings to keep the party united, and had broader appeal than Starmer.

Sometimes touted as Starmer’s potential successor, Rayner was forced to refer himself to the independent ministerial standards adviser on Wednesday after it was admitted he had made a tax error.

In an interview in which she appeared close to tears, Rayner described setting up a trust for one of her sons, who suffers lifelong disabilities as a result of an injury.

It was on the trust that she sold part of her family home in northern England to pay for an apartment in the southern English seaside resort of Hove, confident that she would not have to pay a higher rate of tax on buying a second home.

After taking further legal advice, she then said she had made a mistake and was taking steps to pay the extra tax.

The loss of eight cabinet and junior ministers, five of whom resigned over wrongdoing, means Starmer has suffered the most ministerial resignations, outside of a government reshuffle, of any prime minister at the start of his term since at least 1979.

Starmer has faced more departures than Boris Johnson, the next most, whose administration was later embroiled in allegations of parties breaking the COVID lockdown.

It has hurt Starmer as he prepares for a difficult end to the year, when his government must produce a budget that analysts and markets expect to see further tax increases and try to contain the growing risk from Nigel Farage’s reforms.

Returning from the summer break on Monday, Starmer had hoped that a reshuffle in his Downing Street team would show he was ready to tackle the second half of the year with renewed vigour, bolstering his economic advice.

But this was quickly eclipsed by the allegations against Rayner and Farage’s accusation that Starmer was suppressing free speech.