DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Why won't Rayner come clean on tax? trends now
Spare a thought for Angela Rayner's poor political opponents when she senses even the slightest whiff of impropriety.
Like a terrier sighting a rat, Labour's deputy leader pursues her quarry tenaciously, and with a dollop of moralising thrown in for good measure.
When then Tory chairman Nadhim Zahawi got into bother with the Inland Revenue, she led calls for him to come clean or resign.
And when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was on the rack over failing to declare his wife's business interests, she volubly condemned the 'transparency black hole'.
Yet when inconvenient questions are asked over her own tangled property and financial dealings, Mrs Rayner becomes uncustomarily coy. This reticence is regrettable.
Spare a thought for Angela Rayner's poor political opponents when she senses even the slightest whiff of impropriety
The row centres on the Stockport council house, which she bought in 2007 for £79,000 and sold eight years later for £127,500 – a gross profit of £48,500.
She contends that after marrying in 2010 she lived apart from husband Mark in her property for five years, exempting her from capital gains tax. But neighbours insist she is lying and that her brother resided there.
Ms Rayner is not just feeling the heat over her tax affairs. Police are reviewing claims she broke electoral law by being registered to vote at her house, despite allegedly living with her other half a mile away.
Surely any semi-competent detective could get to the bottom of this mystery.
After a month of trying to avoid covering this story, the BBC has got there in the end.
In a risibly chummy interview – 'Forgive me for doing this on
