Shame of the Tories who tried to smear Angela Rayner as a tax crook

The police all-clear for Labour’s deputy leader is a huge election boost for Keir Starmer, says John Rentoul

The Conservatives have learnt the hard way that Rayner is a more formidable opponent than they thought (PA)

Now that Angela Rayner has been given the police all-clear over claims that she dodged tax on selling her council house, perhaps attention can be focused on evidence of a different form of misconduct in this matter – such as whether Tory MPs who led the witchhunt against her should be investigated for wasting police time.

Rayner stood her ground and won. She insisted she had done no wrong when she sold her former council house, or when she registered to vote before she became an MP – and now Greater Manchester Police has investigated and said they will take no further action.

HMRC has let it be known that it, too, will not take matters further.

The deputy Labour leader has been completely vindicated – including in her tough refusal to publish her private tax and legal advice confirming that she paid the tax that she should, and that she was properly registered to vote.

I wrote last month that she was the victim of class prejudice. She is loud and strong, and her Conservative opponents seem to think that she has got above herself. Her Tory tormentors were sure that they were onto something. They thought it was suspicious that Keir Starmer said that he hadn’t read her advice – that he was keeping his distance from her because her defences were weak.

But it seems that the leader and his deputy, despite their well-advertised differences in the past, were totally united on this issue. Just as they were when Conservative MPs made similar politically motivated complaints to Durham police about the alleged breach of coronavirus regulations during lockdown – the so-called “beergate” affair.

On that occasion, Starmer pledged to resign if he was found to have broken the law, and Rayner, who was at the same campaign event, backed him up by promising to do the same.

So this is a significant victory not just for her, but for the Labour Party as a whole. She and Keir Starmer have now seen off two Tory attacks on their personal conduct. “I always had confidence in her,” said a beaming Starmer on Tuesday, possibly concealing a big sigh of relief.

Her refusal to publish her tax and legal advice seemed to go against the rules of political crisis management. The conventional view is that a politician in trouble should get everything into the public domain as quickly as possible.

But I understand that she was genuinely indignant – “absolutely furious” – about Tories seeking to delve into her private life, in particular from the time before she became an MP, and was determined not to give an inch. Now she has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, she has been immeasurably strengthened. With Labour on the threshold of power, her position as the deputy prime minister is likely to be a powerful one.

Obviously, she has to win re-election in Ashton-under-Lyne first, and we saw more of her toughness in a video leaked this week in which she appealed to Muslim constituents of hers for their support; about 10 per cent of her constituents are Muslims.

She explained to them, with some force, that Labour in opposition could not bring about a ceasefire in Gaza, and that Labour in government wouldn’t have much more influence – when Joe Biden, the president of the United States, cannot get the Israeli government to do what he wants. But she agreed with them that it should happen, and she would do everything she could to bring it about. They didn’t look convinced – but she deserves credit again for standing her ground, and for explaining, in almost Blairite terms, the difference between gestures and practical change.

The Conservatives have learnt the hard way that she is a more formidable opponent than they thought. The announcement by the Greater Manchester Police is yet another blow for Rishi Sunak. Nothing seems to have gone right for him since he announced the election in the rain. If the police had found a case to answer, at this stage of the election campaign, it could have been a momentum-changer.

Instead, Richard Holden, the Tory chair, emerges as a serial offender in casting groundless slurs at the Labour leadership. He was rightly condemned this week for branding Starmer “Sir Sleepy”, in a feeble attempt to copy Donald Trump’s personal attacks on Biden.

In Starmer’s case it is the second time in two years a Conservative smear, led predictably by their cheerleaders in the Tory press, has been dismissed by police.

On that first occasion Starmer was found innocent of allegations he had broken Covid lockdown rules after he was glimpsed having a solitary beer at a Labour event.

In reality, it was a flimsy and disreputable attempt to deflect criticism of the far more serious misconduct in Downing Street by Boris Johnson in the “partygate” scandal.

With Labour so far ahead in the polls for so long it was perhaps inevitable that the Conservatives would resort to flinging mud at their opponents in the absence of anything serious to say about the state of the nation.

Another Conservative MP who comes out of the Rayner investigation with little credit is Manchester MP James Daly who has spearheaded his party’s attacks on Rayner.

And what about the man who made the allegation about Rayner and capital gains tax, former Tory peer Michael Ashcroft, who included it in a book he wrote about her?

Rayner’s alleged “crime” was to avoid a tax bill of £1,000 or so on the profit made from selling a council house she purchased a decade and a half ago as a hard up young woman and mother.

The sum is peanuts compared to the amount multimillionaire Lord Ashcroft benefits from as a result of his – entirely legal of course, though morally questionable in the eyes of some – non-dom tax status.