For a politician who prides herself on giving straight answers, unlike so many of her evasive colleagues, Angela Rayner has been unable to answer one simple question: where does she actually live?
We still don’t actually know if it is her constituency home in Greater Manchester, where her former husband and their children reside, or her grace-and-favour flat in Westminster or her (now infamous) £800,000 seaside apartment in Hove.
What we do know, however, is that her bewildering property affairs have resulted – finally – in her admission that she has not paid enough stamp duty on her new, swanky residence on the Sussex coast and, in the process, potentially avoided, deliberately or otherwise, inheritance tax.
Her silence, the result, she says, of a family court order to protect her special-needs son, has lasted ten tumultuous, revelation-filled days – and a week is supposed to be a long time in politics – when she has gone from heir apparent to the beleaguered Prime Minister (Labour’s approval ratings have slumped to a record low) to, potentially, dethroned Red Queen; the name was coined by Lord Ashcroft, the former Conservative Party deputy chairman, the author of an unauthorised biography of her last year which first raised questions about her dealings in the housing market.
