Understanding the Pressures That Cost Angela Rayner Her Job

The Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Labour Leader resigned after it was revealed she had not paid enough stamp duty tax on an £800,000 flat that should have been classified as her ‘second home’. Regardless of internal party politics, the dynamics which distort public servants are relevant to consider here, argues Labour’s Clive Lewis MP

One cannot help but feel a measure of sympathy for Angela Rayner.

I know her well enough to say that she came into politics for the best of reasons: a desire to serve, a determination to improve the lives of people whose struggles she understood from her own experience.

But the further up the ladder one climbs in politics, the more insistent the temptations become. This is not simply about individual weakness or personal failing. It is structural.