UK Labour Deputy Leader in trouble
The Guardian reports:
Angela Rayner has pledged to step down as deputy leader of the Labour party if a police investigation finds she has committed a crime, amid allegations of breaching electoral law and avoiding capital gains tax.
Greater Manchester police (GMP) said on Friday that they were investigating the sale of her council house in March 2015, after she was accused of giving false information about where she was living for the first five years of her marriage before she was elected as an MP in May 2015.
The issue basically is:
Rayner bought her council house on Vicarage Road, Stockport, in 2007 for £79,000 with a 25% discount under the right-to-buy scheme.
Government guidance says a tenant can apply to buy their council home through the right-to-buy scheme if it is their “only or main home”.
Mark Rayner, now her ex-husband, had a property of his own about a mile away. They decided to keep their separate properties after their son was born prematurely in 2008, as Rayner said she needed a lot of support from a wide network of friends and family during this period, a decision that was maintained even after their marriage in 2010.
For the eight years that Rayner owned her Stockport home, she was registered on the electoral roll as living there and insists it was her “principal property”, while her partner lived at his home.
However, neighbours at the two properties have rejected her claims that she lived apart from her husband for the first five years of their marriage, with her brother living at her house from around 2012, according to reports. Daly has made GMP aware of these claims.
It is an obvious nonsense that she actually lived apart from her husband for the first five years of their marriage,.
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