After Angela Rayner was filmed calling Conservatives “scum” at Labour Party conference, it took the murder of Sir David Amess to force an apology out of her. Sir David’s killing, she posted on Facebook, had caused her to reflect on “our political debate” and the “abuse that now seems to feature all too often”:
“I have also reflected on what I said at an event at Labour Party conference. I was angry about where our country is headed and policies that have made life harder for so many people I represent. But I would like to unreservedly apologise for the language I used, and I would not use it again.
I will continue to speak my mind, stand up for Labour values and hold the government to account. But in the future I will be more careful about how I do that and in the language that I choose.”
All very noble, though it seems this period of reflection and tempered emotions has come to an end. Last night the provincial left-wing paper The Northern Echo splashed with Corbynite MP Andy McDonald’s PMQs words that the PM has “blood on your filthy privileged hands”. Something Chief Treasury Secretary Simon Clarke told Guido is “grotesque”…
Despite her promise to be careful in the language she uses, Angela Rayner was quick to actively post the front page – not just retweet it – garnering 12,200 likes from followers, making sure the provocative message was spread across social media.
#TomorrowsPapersToday 🗞 pic.twitter.com/hhkrdlQJFc
— Angela Rayner 🌹 (@AngelaRayner) May 25, 2022
In private she is unrepentant about using aggressive language “The more outraged they are, the more it feels like I’m doing my job”. Rayner revels in it.
Sir Keir’s double standards are highlighted in primary colours today, up in Teesside, where Tory Police and Crime Commissioner Steve Turner has been completely cleared of allegedly sexually assaulting someone in 1987 after a six-month investigation. In November Sir Keir called for the innocent Police chief to quit for just being under investigation…
Turner wasn’t arrested, nor was he interviewed. Yet in November 2021 Keir Starmer butted his nose in to demand Turner step down:
“This is a test for Steve Turner and he should step down. It’s also a test for the Conservative Party. When there’s a serious investigation like this the attitude of the political parties and the Prime Minister matters, and he should step down… Whilst the investigation is going on he should step down. That is the obviously right thing to do.”
Turner told Guido this was “appalling”, and is now demanding an apology…
Today Steve Turner has written to Starmer about the incident, although he doesn’t entirely attribute blame to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Instead he accuses him of repeating false briefings stirred up by his Labour colleagues, fed to him prior to his interview in which he made the resignation demand. Specifically named are Middlesbrough MP Andy McDonald, ex-MPs Tom Blenkinsop and Anna Turley, Labour frontbencher Bridget Phillipson and Mirror hack Rachel Wearmouth.
“Prior to your interview I am sure you or your team will have been contacted by a member of Labour North and you would have been encouraged to do this interview based on the fact that you believed these allegations were true and not potentially fabricated by members of your own Party. This was not the case and the IOPC statement released yesterday about the sexual assault allegation states that the Police had no lines of enquiry they could follow up on and that I have never even been interviewed or arrested in relation the allegation. This was purely an unsubstantiated allegation with no statement or evidence from any potential victim. I believe you were used Mr Starmer to facilitate an opportunity for Teessides Labour Party to attempt to regain a position they had spectacularly lost just a few months earlier.”
Guido’s contacted Labour to ask whether they’ll be honouring Turner’s demand for an apology, though at the time of going to pixel no response has been forthcoming.
The former Shadow Transport secretary Andy McDonald, who resigned from Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet over the £15 minimum wage row, doesn’t even pay his own staffers £15 per hour. Shock!
Guido dug through the archives and found that between 2020-2021, McDonald paid five staff members a total of £140,880.12, an average of some £28,176.02 each, which works out at £13.55 per hour. If the £140,880.12 was not evenly split, some unfortunate staffer may have been paid even less…
Andy McDonald might have been the toast of the left at Labour’s conference. The fact is he, like the other hypocrites at Momentum and the Bakers Union, has a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do style of politics…
*A co-conspirator in the comments below points out that the gross cost of the salaries will include employers N.I. so the actual net hourly rate to the employee will be lower than £13.55.
UPDATE: Another co-conspirator has done some further calculations:
Assuming an employer’s contribution of 3% kicking in on annual earnings above £6240 and employer’s NICs of 13.8% kicking in at the secondary threshold of £8788, the annual salary, s, would be given by:
s=28716.02-0.03(s-6240)-0.138(s-8788) 1.141s=28716.02+187.2+1212.74=30115.96s=26394.36
Teesside is awash with rumours that Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald is considering following in the footsteps of other Labour luminaries like Andy Burnham, Dan Jarvis and Steve Rotheram by packing in his Westminster career to take up a Metro Mayoral post instead. Guido hears that the Middlesbrough MP has all but abandoned hope of actually becoming Transport Secretary in a Corbyn Government and has designs on taking over his local fiefdom instead. McDonald is more likely to do a Jarvis and carry on as an MP if he wins in May 2020, rather than follow his namesake Andy and give up his seat…
Tory Brexiteer Ben Houchen won a shock victory over Labour in the inaugural contest in 2017, he’s been a champion of free ports which Boris has now enthusiastically adopted as his own policy. Labour got trashed at the local elections in May, losing control of all five councils including McDonald’s own in Middlesbrough which had been Labour since 1974. A tired old shadow cabinet face may find it harder than he thinks to just waltz into the job…
UPDATE: McDonald has said it’s “utter nonsense”. Time will tell…
Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald has a few interesting declarations in the Register of Members Financial Interests, in particular a recurring biannual donation of £30,000 from train drivers’ union ASLEF. McDonald has now received £120,000 from strike-happy ASLEF for “secondment of a researcher for my parliamentary office, value £30,000” since 2017. At £60,000 a year, that’s a hell of a lot more than most MPs’ staff…
However, on the corresponding Register of Interests of Members’ Staff, only one of McDonald’s four researchers declares an interest – and that an internship funded by the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of England and Wales. So one of McDonald’s other three researchers is hiding their union allegiance from the public. Because they’ve failed to declare it, the public has no idea which one of the three it is…
Of course one of the three has recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons, McDonald’s adviser Karl Hansen accused Rachel Riley of being a “bully” for calling out anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Not that ASLEF themselves are likely to mind if Hansen is their man, their President Tosh McDonald was embroiled in a scandal of his own less than two years ago…
TIG’s Chris Leslie did not hold back in his criticism of the Labour Party on Question Time last night. Andy McDonald didn’t like him bringing up Shami Chakrabarti’s curiously timed peerage…
