While Fed Governor Lisa Cook attempts to litigate her way out of an alleged mortgage fraud (for which the Trump administration has delivered the receipts), The U.K.’s deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, resigned this morning following an 'ethical' error on her home purchase tax payments.
Rayner, who admitted on Wednesday that she did not pay enough tax on her purchase of an apartment in Hove, on England’s south coast, earlier this summer, said the report found that she acted in good faith, but that, crucially, she should have sought more specific tax advice.
“I take full responsibility for this error," she said in her resignation letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Of course, this is very different from Lisa Cook's playing of the race-card, not addressing the actual crime she is accused of, and distracting from her actual fraud by claiming it's a witch hunt.
As AP reports, in the U.K., levies are charged on property purchases, with higher charges due on more expensive homes and secondary residences.
Reports have suggested that Rayner saved 40,000 pounds by not paying the appropriate levy, known as a stamp duty, on her 800,000-pound ($1 million) purchase.
Rayner, 45, had sought to explain that her “complex living arrangements” related to her divorce in 2023 and the fact that her son has “lifelong disabilities” underlay her failure to pay the appropriate tax.
In response, Starmer voiced his sadness but said Rayner had made the right decision.
“I have nothing but admiration for you and huge respect for your achievements in politics,” Starmer wrote.
The handwritten letter signed off “with very best wishes and with real sadness.”
But, as Stephen Bush writes at The Financial Times, Angela Rayner’s resignation leaves Sir Keir Starmer’s government weaker and his own position more uncertain, even as the full extent of the damage is still unclear.
Those around Starmer knew full well that if they could keep Rayner, they were better off doing so, because of the chaos and uncertainty that a fresh election for deputy leader creates within the Labour party.
This is why the loudest defenders of the now ex-deputy prime minister were not her core allies but those of Starmer — Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, whose political career lives or dies with his, and Peter Kyle, the ultraloyal secretary of state for science and technology.
As far as the government as a whole is concerned, today’s events force Starmer’s hand in conducting a ministerial reshuffle, at a time when he did not want one.
Given that Downing Street’s own weakness makes a wider reshuffle too risky, he may be saddled with a less far-reaching set of changes than he might have been able to make in the new year.
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Everything from the government’s position on the UK’s relationship with the EU to wealth taxes to trans rights to its handling of Donald Trump could now come under fire from rival deputy leadership candidates.
For Rayner, her housing arrangements have already extracted their price. The costs to Starmer are only just beginning.
Rayner's previous comments had opened her up to charges of hypocrisy, particularly from current Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who said Rayner's position had been “untenable for days.”
“The truth is simple, she dodged tax," she said in a video posted on social media. “She lied about it.”