The Times reports that Rayner will argue that renovations offset her capital gains tax liability on her right-to-buy council tax house’s profitable sale. This is a precautionary fallback line of argument that is a tacit admission that her original story for the last two months that it was her principal primary residence was – as commonsense and all the evidence from neighbours suggests – just not true.

Now planning application details have been unearthed which specify that those improvements include a “new opening to enlarge [the] kitchen” as well as a “new replacement door and window” and the installation of a gas fire. From the photos you can see that the back area with the lower ceiling was opened up.

Guido got in touch with a couple of builders to ask about the work, which involves knocking through a wall to a storage room and extending the kitchen into the space, and was quoted, using 2008 values, £8,000 for the work. On top of that, flueless gas fire plus installation will set you back in the region of £600. That’s not the £23,000 that tax sleuth (and Labour activist) Dan Neidle estimates would be needed to have been spent to offset capital gains tax.

Still, Rayner claimed in 2012 when working for Unison full time to be be making “20 grand a year” and £10,000 is a hefty amount to put into renovations. A two-bed house on Vicarage Road costs £1,100 to rent today. If her brother was living there, as neighbours claim, he might have paid Rayner rent to make the work worthwhile. Did Rayner declare any rent paid to her as a landlady?