Angela Rayner is refusing to pay back a penny of the £16,876 severance pay she received after resigning last year, despite returning to the same job just ten months later. And after attacking the Tories for “a staggering lack of shame” for doing the same back in 2022…
She told Matt Chorley on BBC Radio 5 Live today:
“No, my severance payment was given to me at the time. I’d worked in government for a period of time, and then I came out of government for just under a year, I think is the timetable, and I’ll be delivering in government again. But on the Conservatives who took their severance, we’re talking weeks. Some of them were even, you know, a very short period of the time, and I think that chaos and that wider point about delivering for the British people is what we’re focused on, is not having that chaos. Not looking like we’re in it for ourselves, but actually delivering on the promises that we made in 2024 in that general election.”
That money is of course courtesy of the taxpayer. Admittedly Angela had quite a tax bill of her own to pay recently. At least she knows how to work her benefits…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”