Why Hove?

Hove already has a Labour M.P. - a chap called Peter Kyle, who understandably declared himself ‘disappointed’ that someone had spray-painted (in pink) the words ‘Bitch’ and ‘Tax evader’ on a joint wall of the block while across the street ‘Tax evader Rayner’ was graffitied on construction chipboard, just to drive the point home. In interview, Mr Kyle said: "I’m really disappointed that the heritage wall has been defaced over this issue. Hove is better than this."

From BN3, Hove, up to Ashton-under-Lyne is 262.8 miles. You have to go via the Devil's Dyke Interchange (how appropriately named) on to the A27 to London, get on to the M23, then the M25 to Birmingham, onto the M42 near Solihull, crack on to the M6, then the M56, skirt Manchester on the A635, arriving in Ashton in 4 hours and 23 minutes, if the traffic has been favourable. It's not handy. But then, Alistair Carmichael, my MP, commutes from Orkney, where he lives (in his constituency) to London, a distance of 716 miles, which would take him 15 hours and 20 minutes by ferry and road, non stop. He flies, instead, at the tax-payer's expense. That's me. I'm a Scottish tax-payer. Has he ever said thank you? mr ishmael was with Carmichael and Lord Jim Wallace on an Aberdeen flight once, travelling to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary for a fairly significant medical appointment, as were several others on the flight, which was running late (flying late?). When the plane landed and the doors opened, the stewardess prevented the passengers from leaving in order to let Lord Jim and Carmichael out first, as they had a connection to catch to London. The stewardess was sure none of the other passengers would mind waiting, given the importance of their business. She was wrong. There was muttering. And not just from mr ishmael. D'you know what? Everyone had appointments to keep or onward flights to catch, and everyone thought they were just as important as the Parliamentarians.

MPs do not have to live in their constituency. In fact, there is no residency qualification at all - an MP could even live outside the UK. 2020 figures offered us 32.7% of Tories and  64.1% of Labour MPs living in their constituencies. So the fact that Rayner proposes living in Hove as her sole residence should pose no problem, just as long as she pops back to Ashton now and then to conduct the odd surgery, refresh her Northern credentials and check in on the family. Funny that she is still registered with Tameside Council for Council Tax purposes. And the electoral roll. Rayner continued to declare the Ashton house as her primary residence, which allowed her to avoid paying Council Tax on her London grace and favour flat, as it was not considered her main residence. Presumably it isn't, now, as she'll have to move out. Has she gone, yet, or is she still packing?

However, her new Hove flat was registered with Brighton and Hove Council as a second home for council tax purposes, creating what critics described as an inconsistent classification of her residences across different tax systems - because she claimed the Hove place as her primary residence for Stamp Duty purposes. 

Hmm. Inconsistent classification. A bit like being economical with the truth.

So, assuming she has no plans to defenestrate Peter Kyle, why Hove? Certainly handier for London than it is for Ashton. Julie Birchill, writing in the Spectator on the 5th September, reckoned it is the poshness of the place that attracted her: "BN3, where we’ll be neighbours, is one of the most valuable and sought after postcodes outside of London..... It was a desire for gentility, as much as greed, that undid her, perhaps, which given her proud boasts of proletarian purity seem poignant. Even Red Ange, it seems, could not resist the discreet charm of the Hove-eoisie".

It all looks a bit holiday-homeish to me. Definitely second home vibe going on.

Then there's the vexed question of the means used to purchase the sunny Hove beach-adjacent property.

Rayner has three sons, the first,  Ryan, by her relationship with Neil Batty. As she is very fond of telling anyone who will listen, she gave birth to Ryan when she was 16, as a single parent. Ryan is all grown up now and has made Angela a grannie. GILF, anyone? Angela then married Mark Rayner, a Unison official. The couple had two sons, Charlie and Jimmy. As mr mongoose informed us on the previous thread, Charlie was born very prematurely. He is 17 now. He has life-long disabilities and the Rayners pursued an action against the NHS for 11 years, which was finally settled for an undisclosed sum. A court-instructed trust was established in 2020 to administer the compensation award. The trustees were both parents and a solicitor. 

Rayner said: "After I sold my stake to the trust, I bought a property in Hove in May 2025. I used the lump sum from selling my stake in my Ashton home, which was the only property I owned and where my savings were, for the deposit on my new one. I obtained a mortgage to finance the rest."

Hold up there. She sold her 25% stake in the family home to the trust of which she was a trustee,  for a sum of £162,500.  Okay. Self-dealing is the conduct of a trustee, attorney, corporate officer, or other fiduciary that consists of taking advantage of their position in a transaction and acting in their own interests rather than in the interests of the beneficiaries of the trust, corporate shareholders, or their clients. According to the political scientist Andrew Stark, "in self-dealing, an officeholder's official role allows her to affect one or more of her own personal interests." It is a form of conflict of interest.

 Political scientists Ken Kernaghan and John Langford define self-dealing as "a situation where one takes an action in an official capacity which involves dealing with oneself in a private capacity and which confers a benefit on oneself."

Where a fiduciary has engaged in self-dealing, this constitutes a breach of the fiduciary relationship. The principal of that fiduciary (the person to whom duties are owed) may sue and both recover the principal's lost profits and disgorge the fiduciary's wrongful profits. Was the 25% share of the Ashton house really worth £162,500? Could that have been obtained on the open market? Should the value of the Ashton house go down and the Hove flat go up, Rayner would have made a profit from the transaction, which would be a wrongful profit.

Charlie isn't going to sue his mum. She's his mum. And he's got learning disabilities. The other trustees could, though, on Charlie's behalf.

The breach of the fiduciary relationship is not criminal - but it is contrary to Civil Law - and it stinks. Basically, Rayner has used her son's compensation from the NHS to buy herself a flat.

Then there's the reputational damage to the conveyancing firm involved - Verrico & Associates has said it did not provide advice and had been made "scapegoats" in the political row. It is a family business. Managing director Joanna Verrico stated "we are probably being made scapegoats for all this and I have got the arrows stuck in my back to show it."

The next thing to ponder is that Rayner is due a severance payment of £16,876 as former Deputy Prime Minister.  In February 2024 Rayner voted in favour of ministerial severance pay reform that would stop ministers who were found to have breached the ministerial code from receiving a payout. 

Anyway, an excellent outcome of this murky business is that it has allowed Toolmakersson Starmer to sack the oaf David Lammy from his high profile Foreign Secretary post.  He really was an embarrassment. He's been fobbed off with the unpaid Deputy Prime Minister role and made Justice Secretary, which should keep him in Britain and stop him from making undertakings that are contrary to Britain's best interests. Yvette Cooper has also been sacked from the Home Office, where she was doing a piss-poor job of keeping Britain's borders secure from rather large numbers of asylum seekers of raping age. She's going to have her turn at being Foreign Secretary, and although she looks like a spiteful little thing, she can't be worse than the Oaf Lammy. Shabana Mahmood has got Cooper's old job in the Home Office and we're told that she's a hard nut. Given the size of the Cabinet re-shuffle, we must hope that Starmer has got it right this time. I wouldn't hold your breath, though.