Angela Rayner likes to tells it how it is…now she needs to do it on her council house too
If Angela were being true to her beliefs, she wouldn’t have bought the house in the first place
OOH – so the plot thickens! I’m talking about Angela Rayner.
And the house she flogged after buying it from the council, netting a very tidy profit.
It now seems she was regarded by neighbours of the property as its “landlady”.
And was seemingly never to be seen living there.
Was she letting it out? My guess is that we will find out, sooner or later.
Who is Angela Rayner and why does any of this stuff matter?
Ange is the charismatic deputy leader of the Labour Party.
She’s kind of Sir Keir Starmer’s left-wing conscience.
A bit like John Prescott used to be for Tony Blair.
She’s a striking figure.
Looks like she’s got a giant dead fox on her head.
Always outspoken. While Sir Keir is being all Prime Ministerial, she’s the one behind the curtain shouting: “Tory scum!”
The party activists love her. And, truth be told, I’ve got a lot of time for her as well.
We need more people like Angela Rayner in politics.
A single mum with no qualifications, she dragged herself up by wit and force of personality. I think she’s great.
But not when she’s being a hypocrite.
And boy, has she been a hypocrite.
She got herself a council house then bought it.
And it is now revealed that in 2015 she flogged it, making a £48,500 profit.
Nothing remotely wrong with that.
The problem is that being a leftie, Angela doesn’t think YOU should be allowed to buy your council house.
Let alone sell it for a whopping profit.
She thinks it’s immoral for councils to sell off properties.
But she forgot all that when it came to her own circumstances and was very happy to trouser nearly 50 grand.
Having her cake
And here’s the thing.
For all Labour’s talk about inequality and the need to transfer wealth to the poor, the sale of council houses to tenants represented the biggest transfer of wealth in this country’s history.
It was Margaret Thatcher who sold off the council houses.
And Labour opposed it. They still oppose the policy today.
If Angela were being true to her beliefs she wouldn’t have bought the house in the first place.
Or, if she’s changed her mind, she should say so.
And admit that, actually, letting council tenants buy their homes is a bloody good idea.
So long as more social housing is made available.
But she hasn’t done.
She’s having her cake and eating it.
And in that she is so similar to other Labour lefties who do stuff they argue you shouldn’t be allowed to do.
So, there’s Emily Thornberry who sent her kids out of the borough to a selective school.
When she argues against selective schools.
Or Shami Chakrabarti and Diane Abbott, who criticise others for sending their kids to private schools.
But sent their OWN kids to private schools.
And those contradictions tell you a lot about the Labour Party.
They argue one thing, but then, when nobody is looking, they do the precise opposite.
Because they know themselves that it’s the right thing to do.
I hope we still see lots of Angela Rayner in future.
She’s a good politician. But as she is known for telling it like it is, why not do so this time, Angela?
Admit that the sale of council houses was an incredibly good idea.
And that Labour will continue it? Or give that £48,500 back to the council.
LEE Anderson’s comments about London Mayor Sadiq Khan were a bit dim-witted.
If he has evidence that the ’orrible Khan is being controlled by Islamists, as he put it, then he should name a few names.
But what he said was not Islamophobic, or racist.
And the point I think he was trying to make is correct.
We have allowed these Islamist extremists to terrorise Parliament.
And beam anti-Semitic propaganda on to Big Ben.
When are we going to get to grips with these pro-Palestinian thugs?
Improving our Army . . . a load of hot air
AS part of a fiendish new plan to terrify Vladimir Putin, the British Army is apparently investing heavily in dummy weapons, such as inflatable tanks.
These will convince Vlad that we have many more tanks than we really have and make him think twice about invading Latvia or Poland.
It seems to me a cost-effective stratagem – unless we tell him in advance that all of our tanks are inflatable (so keep it quiet, huh?).
Also, this being Britain, someone will probably lose the foot pump to blow them up. “I thought it was in the garage with that swingball set and the broken clothesline?
“Oh God, I think I may have lent it to Len next door when he had those friends to stay on lilos . . . ” I do wonder, though, if the Army should take a similar approach to solving its recruiting crisis.
Inflatable dolls of an agreeably diverse range and size can be bought at reasonable cost from places like Ann Summers.
They should confuse the hell out of the Ivans.
Brighten up, Beeb
INCREDIBLY, the BBC is still refusing to call Hamas a terrorist organisation.
Despite the fact that it is . . . a terrorist organisation.
And its bias on the war in Gaza is evident on every news and current affairs programme.
Who says so, apart from me? Well, there’s the former Attorney General, Sir Michael Ellis.
He said the BBC was institutionally anti-Semitic and had failed to deal with the bias in its coverage.
He added that the corporation had drawn “a moral equivalence between a democratic state whose leaders are elected by their people . . . and a genocidal terrorist group that oppresses its people and murders children and civilians”.
Precisely. Why do we allow this bias to continue?
Time to packet-in, Hunt
THAT smirking reptile Jeremy Hunt – the Chancellor of the Exchequer to you, mate – is planning another rise in tax on cigarettes.
This would mean a half- decent pack of 20 costing in the region of 16 quid.
Hunt thinks he can get away with this because nobody is prepared to stand up for smokers.
Well I am, even if I’m not a smoker any more.
We all choose our poisons.
I dunno what Hunt’s is.
But it is immoral to say that smoking is evil then trouser ever greater amounts of money from it.
Money taken from the pockets of some of the poorest of us.
It’s The Sun wot done it
A LITTLE late in the day, the BBC has apologised for its appalling handling of the complaint made by the family ripped apart by that Huw Edwards business.
It’s taken the buggers nine months to do so.
At the time it was more intent on blaming this paper for breaking the story.
The Sun was vilified by the BBC. And its useful liberal idiots in the rest of the media.
The corporation thought it could ignore the “little people” who complained and their claims about how their youngster had been treated by one of its stars.
It was only thanks to The Sun that those “little people” have now got a degree of justice.
Rail problem
WHY do the rail companies make it so difficult to buy return tickets on their station machines?
Easy answer.
So they can make more money by passengers having to buy two single tickets.
Our rail services are a disgrace and the public is being fleeced at every turn.
Pain and pages
YOUNG kids just starting school are apparently mystified by some of the stuff they see.
Especially those really weird things – books.
Teachers are reporting that lots of kids are bemused by books.
And they sit there trying to swipe left.
And look shocked when nothing happens.
It’s becoming more and more clear.
The greater we restrict electronic devices to our kids, the better off they will be.
Mac is right on Vlad
THE French President Emmanuel Macron has a certain knack of getting on my wick.
I don’t suppose it bothers him hugely.
But he does speak his mind.
And he is quite often right.
This week he said that we might end up having to fight the Russkies with our own troops.
He was immediately slapped down by the rest of Nato.
But what he said was firstly true – it MIGHT come to that.
And second it sends exactly the right message to Vladimir Putin.
The Russians responded by saying that would mean a war between Nato and Russia.
Yes, perhaps.
And who would win that, Vlad?