A bold move

Truly our Deputy Prime Minister is the gift that keeps on giving.

Not content with ensuring she has an official photographer - on a £68k salary - following around to document her doings, she has, it appears, now found a novel use for all those civil servants assigned to help with her workload in Westminster.

As Guido Fawkes tells it, doubtless fed up with them cluttering up her office, last month our Ange bussed them all round to her London flat and set them to work packing boxes, shifting furniture and emptying the fridge ahead of her move to rather more luxurious quarters in Admiralty House. 

As a modus operandi, it’s interestingly reminiscent of the former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith who, when her dining room needed redecorating, popped over to her local prison and grabbed a couple of inmates on the community-service programme to do the job in exchange for a nominal donation to charity and some plants.

At the time, I suggested this was the result of the same conflation of the professional and the personal - ‘l’état, c’est moi!’ - which has led politicians of all persuasions to claim a spectacular variety of goodies (not to mention inflated mortgage payments and, pertinently at the moment, sky-high heating bills) on expenses in the belief that they are somehow entitled to live it up in style at public expense by virtue of their position.

Rayner’s response to the public anger when details emerged of the donor-funded designer clothing, holidays and tickets merrily hoovered up by Labour’s front bench was to suggest that the outrage she faced was because she had been ‘over-transparent’; like a stroppy year 10 pupil caught smoking behind the bike-sheds, she seems to believe that the problem is not what she and the others did but the fact that she owned up after being found out.

As was the case over her unconventional living arrangements in Stockport (she and her brother in one former council house, her husband and kids in another a mile down the road, at least as far as the Inland Revenue was concerned) and her use of headed House of Commons paper to write a distinctly menacing complaint to a shoe shop, Rayner would doubtless have no problem with using government employees as removal men and women -  after all, as she might see it, they are civil servants.

And it certainly puts a whole new slant on the idea of them ‘working from home’.

What lies beneath

In the high and far off times, when Angela Rayner thought Stockport so good she lived there twice, a strikingly similar scenario was playing out down south: 

A senior aide to Jeremy Corbyn has hit back after allegations that he is engaging in electoral fraud.

Our hero is one Sam Tarry, erstwhile paramour of Ms Rayner and undeclared house guest in Lord Alli’s New York penthouse flat during Our Ange’s surprisingly inexpensive New Year’s Eve break, and there’s something oddly familiar about his unconventional domestic arrangements a decade ago…

The Sunday Times alleged that, while Tarry says he lives in a flat in Barking [where he serves as a councillor], he actually lives in Brighton with his wife. The Brighton address is on their marriage certificate and Land Registry records show that Tarry and his wife jointly own the property.

Tarry’s claim to have been permanently resident in Barking for most of the duration of his marriage seems a bit rough on his wife - and, for that matter, on the two children they somehow managed to produce under the circumstances before he bunked off with Angie a few years later. In any case, it all sounds as if it might have been a bit cramped at the Essex end of things:

The newspaper also reported that a trade union official, named Elly Baker, lived at the Barking flat. Tarry’s lawyers said she was his lodger. 

It’s all more than a little reminiscent of Angela and her brother/lodger supposedly enjoying domestic bliss two miles down the road from her husband and young children. So what might connect two people (three if you count Mr Rayner) extracting the maximum benefit - political or financial - from declaring distinctly odd living arrangements despite the contrary paperwork and anecdotal evidence of their neighbours? 

There may be a clue in the fact that all three are former trade union officials and thus, especially in matters relating to finance or public life, likely to have sought advice from union lawyers - certainly Tarry and Rayner’s confident public denials of wrongdoing suggest a complacent certainty of being covered by a technicality.

Sound familiar? This is the Party whose leaders have, in recent weeks, made deliberately misleading statements - ‘I didn’t go to New York with anyone’ and ‘There isn’t a document on my desk’ - perfect examples of sophistry by being economical with the truth*. I suspect that, this time round, Labour’s spin doctors have been joined by a hidden crew of lawyers ready to advise on loopholes, technicalities and sneaky evasions all, of course, for the greater good; as every Socialist knows, the end justifies the means.

I have a horrible feeling we are going to be seeing much, much more of this in the future

(Expanded from an exchange of comments at AK Haart’s place)

*A fitting coda from Starmer in a recorded interview broadcast this morning:

“Well, look, there was no breach of the rules or anything like that. We complied with everything.”

Also, from Guido Fawkes:

Starmer’s team have made changes to the register this year following “advice” sought from authorities. They said they “believed we had been compliant, however, following further interrogation this month, we have declared further items.”

A Fairytale of New York (and elsewhere)

I thought I’d closed the Tavern doors for good but sometimes the Muse strikes and resistance is futile.

(With apologies to fans of the original…)

“It’s New Year’s Eve, babe, 

In a Manhattan flat

Lord Alli’s lent me, so why not come along?

He says it isn’t wrong;

‘Just put the figures through

Two-fifty a night we’ll say, Ange, just ‘cos it’s you.’

Aren’t we the lucky ones?

We’ll never lack for funds

As long as Lord Alli is here for me and you,

So here’s to freebies

New York holidays,

The best designers; he’ll make our dreams come true.

“We’ve fine jackets and scarves

When the weather gets cold;

Who cares about WFA for the old?

We can sit in the front row 

Among VIPs,

And then claim it’s self-sacrifice rather than sleaze.

It’s our cultural duty!

Go see Taylor’s booty,

Take the kids to the footie - the donors will pay.

Give Downing Street passes

In exchange for free glasses

Then cover our arses and go on our way.”

But suddenly the voters know

And say it’s not fair play;

Will they rat each other out to get away?

“You're a leech!” “You're a skunk!”

“Were you clueless or drunk

That you never once said ‘All this might be misread’?”

“You scumbag! “You maggot!

If you want it you’ll blag it,

Kiss a millionaire’s arse to come up with the brass.”

Or, though people hate hypocrisy 

And wish they’d go away,

Will they keep on selling out day after day?