Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has resigned following a scandal over her failure to pay the correct amount of property tax, UK media reported Friday, adding to the woes of the country’s struggling center-left government.
Her departure is another headache for the United Kingdom’s increasingly unpopular leader, Keir Starmer, and deprives his cabinet of one of its brightest political stars.
Despite securing a landslide election victory in July 2024, Labour is now facing a rising challenge from the upstart anti-immigration Reform UK party, which currently leads national opinion polls and is holding a national conference in Birmingham on Friday.
Rayner, who also served as Britain’s housing minister, had been fighting for her political survival after it emerged that she had not paid enough property taxes on an apartment in Hove on England’s southern coast, which she bought earlier this year.
Rayner claimed her mistake was unwitting and based on poor legal advice. Yet opposition parties and right-wing British tabloids quickly labeled her a hypocrite, due to her history of mauling Conservative ministers in the previous government over similar “sleazy” incidents. Her actions soon snowballed into a national scandal.
Starmer initially stood up for his deputy, but his support grew more anemic day by day. Defending Rayner became ever more challenging, given that Britain is wracked by a housing crisis and that Labour is considering raising taxes, including on property. Critics said her position had become untenable.
Rayner’s resignation has cost Labour one of its most talented politicians, whose forthright style, working-class roots and strong northern English accent helped bridge divisions within the parliamentary Labour party.
Rayner grew up poor on the outskirts of Manchester and became a mother at 16. Before entering politics, she trained as a carer for older people and worked as a trade union representative. Her earthy, extroverted manner contrasts with the more reserved, standoffish Starmer, a former human rights lawyer.
Used to politicians who are overly polished and often educated at expensive private schools, young Labour voters have delighted in Rayner’s “realness.” She has been filmed dancing at a London Pride march and partying in a DJ booth in Ibiza. Recently, she was pictured vaping while in an inflatable canoe off the beach in Brighton.
But Rayner’s apartment near that beach became the flashpoint for the scandal. When Rayner bought the property in neighboring Hove for £800,000 (nearly $1.1 million) in May this year, she said she had been advised that she did not need to pay the tax – known as stamp duty – which is higher on second homes. Rather than paying the higher rate, which would have amounted to £70,000 (£94,000), she paid £30,000 ($40,000).
Rayner said she did so because she had already sold her stake in her Greater Manchester constituency home and put it into a trust for her children. That trust was funded from a medical award after her son was left with life-long disabilities after he was born prematurely.
Some tax experts voiced modest sympathy for Rayner, given how complicated the UK tax system is.
“The tax system is a mess, stamp duty particularly messy, and the higher rate for additional properties beyond messy,” Dan Neidle, the founder of Tax Policy Associates, wrote on X. “So, I’m generally forgiving of people who make mistakes.”
But Neidle conceded that Rayner had made her position more difficult given how, during Labour’s years in opposition, she often hounded Conservative politicians over their own tax affairs.
In 2018 she accused then-health minister Jeremy Hunt of “sleaze” for using a “Tory tax loophole” to save nearly £100,000 in stamp duty when buying seven apartments. She also called for the resignation of Nadhim Zahawi, the former chancellor, after he confirmed he paid nearly £5 million ($6.7 million) to authorities to settle his tax affairs.
Although some analysts have suggested Starmer may quietly be pleased with the resignation of his main rival and potential successor, the toppling of Rayner caps off what has been a dreadful summer for Labour, in which the party has lost more ground in the polls to the insurgent Reform UK.
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