Angela Rayner's latest scandal should make Andy Burnham furious, argues Aaron Newbury. I am beginning to think Andy Burnham won't be any different from Keir Starmer - and Angela Rayner's latest indiscretion proves it. Why anyone would appoint Ms Rayner to a Cabinet posting is beyond me, and rather throws into doubt their wider judgement.
Ill-tempered and ill-mannered, Ms Rayner spent the majority of her time before Government snarling on the backbenchers and hurling insults at anyone vaguely to the right of your average communist. Yet having spent years decrying all her opposite numbers as 'scum', she was floated into a position of immense privilege and profound duty, namely a British cabinet minister.
Rayner's Severance Payment
And then, when rightly defenestrated after failing to pay her taxes on a property purchase, she made off with £16,876 of our money. So this week, when the news broke that she intended to keep her loot, I confess I was hardly surprised.
When confronted on the grotesque injustice of her making off with yet more proceeds of the public purse she snarled that the money was hers. She even claimed that the cash was "given to her", as though it dropped out of the heavens, not out of the pockets of British families working to fund every penny of it.
Hypocrisy on Severance
Yet of course it gets worse, because Angela Rayner used to make her name savaging Conservative ministers for taking exactly these payments. When Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak's chaotic reshuffles saw ministers pocketing severance cheques in 2022, nobody was louder than Ms Rayner in her fury. And I agree with what she proclaimed then - it was greed, it was entitlement and it was wrong. But now she has one of her own, and the outrage seems to have evaporated. Her extraordinarily vapid defence was that she had served longer.
Where Is Andy Burnham?
And where is Andy Burnham in all of this? Just days before our new Prime Minister stood outside Downing Street and told us he understood that the British people are sick of politicians. Like all who came before him, he would be different. This time, really, would be about ordinary people, not the Westminster class.
Mr Burnham should be absolutely furious. He should be on the phone right now and telling his newly restored Housing Secretary to write a cheque this afternoon. If he means a single word of what he said on the steps of No 10, this is the moment to prove it. Because if Mr Burnham cannot even bring Angela Rayner to hand back £17,000 that was never rightly hers, why on earth should any voter believe he can change anything at all?
