The Mount of Olives, where according to the Bible Jesus said to his disciples that “He who has no sin, let him cast the first stone”, is very far from London (also from Madrid or Lisbon, and much more from Washington). About five thousand kilometers from the English capital. Perhaps this distance means that the conservatives, in this case the British, have a clear conscience when it comes to throwing garbage at their rivals, when the filth reaches them up to their eyebrows.
Fourteen Tory MPs – an average of one a year – have lost their seats over a wide range of scandals since David Cameron won the 2010 election, from financial irregularities to bullying of subordinates to tax evasion. taxes, sexual abuse and almost anything imaginable. The latest, Mark Menzies, resigned last week after calling an aide at night to ask for money, alleging that there were “bad people” who had kidnapped him from his home and were going to hurt him. Not even in the movies.
To a similar record should be added the scandals of ministers forced to leave the cabinet, advisers, or of the multi-millionaire wife of the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who declared herself not domiciled in the country for tax purposes to pay the minimum. But this does not prevent the conservatives of this country, like those of others, from adopting a position of moral height (as if they were climbing the Mount of Olives) and unscrupulously looking for the straw in the eyes of others, without seeing the beam in his
Its latest victim is Labor deputy leader Angela Rayner, a working-class trade unionist, single mother at 16 and grandmother at 37, who dropped out of school to care for her daughter and bipolar mother at the same time, and despite this paved the way for life and politics. Within Labor he is a kind of cult figure, who says things as he thinks them, praised for his authenticity (a rare quality in the profession), intelligence and ability to maneuver.
Her sin would have been to declare a decade and a half ago as her first residence an official protection flat she had bought at a discount when she was single, and not her husband’s (from whom she later separated), which was a kilometer away of distance She claims that she spent more time in the first, but her accusers – among them, some neighbors who probably vote Tory – allege that she was almost always in the second.
It seems like a minor technicality, but if Rayner lived in her husband’s house, she would have had to pay more taxes on the capital gain on the sale of hers, an operation in which she earned just under a hundred thousand euros. And if he had said he lived where he didn’t, it would be a breach of electoral law. At first, Manchester police saw nothing fishy in all this, no signs of a crime, but have reopened the investigation due to the presentation of new allegations by the Conservative Party, which does not know what to do to prevent a undone when calling elections.
Challenging voters to elect the least corrupt or law-breaking group of politicians does not at first glance seem like the best possible strategy for the Tories, given their record on the matter, and the fact that Rayner’s whistleblower is none other than Lord Ashcroft, a prominent Conservative philanthropist who boasts of having his millions in Belize, “the last tax haven”, is an example of his perspicacity. In the worst case scenario, the Labor deputy leader would owe the Treasury less than two thousand euros. Prime Minister Sunak’s wife has saved herself millions after declaring herself a non-resident for tax purposes. Behind the attacks there seems to be a certain amount of classism and misogyny.
Rayner says he has a report that would clear her of dust and chaff, but he has not shown it, and says he will resign if found guilty of any crime. Labor are no saints (almost no politician is), but on the Richter scale of sinners they are well below the Tories.
