'Three Pads' Rayner: a housing hypocrite?
As real estate moguls go, the Deputy PM is 'hardly Donald Trump'

John Prescott was famously nicknamed "Two Jags" because of his love of the luxury motor car – but his tastes were "relatively modest" in comparison with those of the present Deputy Prime Minister, said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail.
Angela Rayner, who is also Secretary of State for Housing, is amassing a veritable "property empire", having just purchased an £800,000 seafront flat in trendy Hove. Combine that with Rayner's "handsome, four-bedroom £650,000 detached house" in her constituency of Ashton-under-Lyne, and the three-bedroom, grace-and-favour ministerial apartment that she gets to use at Admiralty House on Whitehall, and the Deputy PM now has "Three Pads" and a "stately" ten bedrooms at her disposal. Not bad for an avowed socialist whose government is "doing its damnedest to make life harder for ordinary homeowners".
There's nothing wrong, of course, with a working-class woman bettering herself, said the Daily Mail. In fact, it is "admirable": Rayner has done "astonishingly well for someone who left school aged 16, pregnant and without qualifications". But the hypocrisy is galling. Labour has demonised second-home owners, punishing many with an extra 100% council tax charge. Rayner's own department argues that they damage communities and price local families out of the market – yet here she is, "expanding her property portfolio".
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
So Rayner has bought a flat, said Ben Kentish in The i Paper. And now, like at least a quarter of MPs, she owns a grand total of two properties. As real estate moguls go, "she is hardly Donald Trump". Strange that her Hove flat has received so much more hostile coverage than, say, the actual property empire owned by the Tory MP Jeremy Hunt (he has seven buy-to-let properties in Southampton; plus properties in Pimlico, Surrey and Italy). The whole thing "reeks" of classism.
"This is one of those stories that seems to want to be a scandal", but doesn't quite manage it, said Sam Leith in The Spectator. Rayner has never said that she is against second-home ownership. She has vocally supported the double council tax on such homes – which, by the way, was brought in by the last Tory government – believing it will help combat inequality in housing. And she's happy to pay the double tax on the Hove flat. When a person does something they consider to be in the public interest but which personally disadvantages them, we don't generally call it hypocrisy. On the contrary, "we usually hold this to be rather a noble thing".
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
‘Porsche’s luxury credentials are now hanging by a thread’
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Choose your own wellness adventure in Greater Palm Springs
The Week Recommends Hit the spa, try a sound bath or take a hike
-
Trump’s deportations are starting to impact how we eat
IN THE SPOTLIGHT The Department of Labor’s admission that immigration raids have affected America’s food supplies reopens a longstanding debate
-
The end of ‘golden ticket’ asylum rights
The Explainer Refugees lose automatic right to bring family over and must ‘earn’ indefinite right to remain
-
The GOP: Merging flag and cross
Feature Donald Trump has launched a task force to pursue “anti-Christian policies”
-
Taking aim at Venezuela’s autocrat
Feature The Trump administration is ramping up military pressure on Nicolás Maduro. Is he a threat to the U.S.?
-
Comey indictment: Is the justice system broken?
Feature U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan has indicted former FBI Director James Comey on charges of lying and obstructing Congress
-
Government shuts down amid partisan deadlock
Feature As Democrats and Republicans clash over health care and spending, the shutdown leaves 750,000 federal workers in limbo
-
Russia: already at war with Europe?
Talking Point As Kremlin begins ‘cranking up attacks’ on Ukraine’s European allies, questions about future action remain unanswered
-
Under siege: Argentina’s president drops his chainsaw
Talking Point The self-proclaimed ‘first anarcho-capitalist president in world history’ faces mounting troubles
-
Sarkozy behind bars: the conviction dividing France
In the Spotlight The former president of the republic has portrayed judicial investigation of his ties to Gaddafi regime as a left-wing witch-hunt