Angela Raynor: The Foul Stench of Bourgeois Democracy

Angela Raynor, deputy Prime Minister to Keir Starmer and one time luminary of the Labour left under Jeremy Corbyn, has been caught fiddling  her tax returns and forced to resign. Although false declarations such as this are considered as tax fraud, she faces no prosecution.

Once again, and with  increasing frequency, the seal has broken on the  Westminster cesspit, adding to the  foul stench that already hangs heavily over this showpiece of Western democracy.

Raynor’s  failure to pay £40,000 worth of  taxes on her third luxury home in Hove is not particularly novel. After all, it was only a month ago that the Homelessness Minister, Rushara Ali, was forced to resign having evicted a sitting tenants from one of her London properties and then jacking up the monthly rent by an extra £700.

Much has been made about Raynor’s working class background, but that only makes her deceit  even more reprehensible. The fact that she could even afford to buy an £800,000 pound luxury seaside home says something about her complete separation from the lives of ordinary people.  Bear in mind that she already lives in a 3-bedroom “grace and favour” apartment in Admiralty House, which has a current market value of between £1.2 and £2.45 million. This is not her personal property but when you add it to her primary home in Ashton-under-Lyne, valued at £650,000, it underlines her millionaire lifestyle.

Raynor’s life of luxury is partly afforded by her ministerial salary, which currently runs at £160,000 per year - almost seven times that of a manual worker in Stockport where she was raised. Not content with that, and the tens of thousands of pounds available to her in other official expenses, she has also benefitted from sizeable donations and hospitality packages from private companies.

In 2023 alone, she was the recipient of  some £130,000 worth of such backhanders.  One of the donors was a company called Sovereign Strategy Ltd whose website was quite candid about the benefits of this type of arrangement:

“We’ve been working for over 20 years with global businesses such as Bloomberg and Intuit to get their message heard at the highest levels of government and in the media. We have the tools and expertise to work with you to make your goals become reality.”

Shady dealings like these have a long history stretching well into the 21^st century. They were at the core of the previous Tory administrations and were targeted by Labour as part of a pledge of “clean government”.  Needless to say, it was only a matter of months before the same old shit rose to the surface. This time it went to the very top, with the revelation that Starmer had accepted over £107,145 worth of gifts, benefits, and hospitality packages since 2019. This extended into his premiership when he failed to declare several thousands of pounds of gifts in clothing and accessories from the media entrepreneur Baron Alli. Raynor herself was also a recipient of such clothing, valued at £3,550 - the equivalent of 7 months rent for a 3 bedroom housing association flat in Stockport, but a mere bagatelle for the likes of Raynor and her cronies.

You might have thought that the pungent aroma permeating the hallowed halls of Westminster could not get any worse. Not so,  the deeper you dig, the fouler the stench becomes. Take the current Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper (now promoted to Foreign Secretary), for example. In 2023, Cooper received a private donation of £210,000 to pay for three additional members of staff for her office.  This was on top of a further donation of £188,597. All of that was declared and considered  acceptable, despite the fact that,  at that time, both Raynor and Cooper were able to claim hundreds of thousands of pounds to cover their official parliamentary duties. In the same year, for example, Raynor claimed nearly £40,000 in expenses, including £1,600 spent on 23 first-class rail tickets between London and Manchester.

One of Cooper’s major donors was a company called MPM Connect Ltd, whose physical existence is shrouded in secrecy. The company's accounts do not disclose where it receives its funding, what it does or why it donates so heavily. It does list two directors - recruitment mogul Peter Hearn and Simon Murphy, the entrepreneur and CEO of a Malaysian owned consortium known as the Battersea Power Station Development Company. The latter was responsible for the £9 billion investment in a host of new retail, property and leisure businesses on south London’s riverside.

The wave of big-money donations to Labour MPs is no accident. It coincides with Labour’s commitment to big business as the driving force of the British economy. This was evident even before the recent revelations. Writing in a January 2023 issue of the Financial Times, the journalist, Jim Pickard, observed:

“Labour has made a virtue of the fact that it is now raising more money from business people than at any time since it was last in power, reflecting the pro-business stance of leader, Keir Starmer.

A royal institution

Within this pyramid of power today, the various layers of governance offer rising levels of wealth acquisition, each of them a stepping stone to even greater riches.  At the summit stands our glorious King, an atrophied monarch whose family boast a combined personal fortune of  over £23 billion.

At this point, we would do well to remember that this, after all, is His Majesty’s government which resides in the Palace of Westminster, situated in the capital of the United Kingdom. Charles may not make the decisions, but he is considered a central plank of state power and is rewarded accordingly.

Amongst the multiple castles, palaces and landed estates which provide official royal residences, Buckingham Palace is the premiere showpiece of royal power, with a current market value of around £4.5 billion. Whilst thousands sleep on London streets, the palace boasts 775 rooms, including 52 royal and guest bedrooms, 78 bathrooms, 188 staff bedrooms and 92 offices. With its vast array of treasures, the monarchy is the pinnacle, the crowning glory if you like, of the system of class privilege and power buttressed by the two houses of Parliament. Each year parliament confers a huge sum of money – known as The Sovereign Grant - to service His Majesty’s public functions and to reward his private profit. As the latter rises, so too does the grant, meaning that this year the monarchy will be awarded the princely sum of £132 million.

The law lords

Resting immediately below the monarch, lies the unelected House of Lords whose 776 members claimed £21 million in allowances and expenses for 2023. That was part of a bill amounting to £104.6 million in running costs, excluding estates and works expenditure.  Apart from hinting at a face saving cosmetic surgery which would remove the 92 hereditary peers, Sir Keir Starmer is a dedicated devotee of both the monarch and the upper chamber. After all, it would be a sorry state of affairs for a monarchy not to have a court of adoring Barons, Bishops, Duchesses, Earls, Viscounts and retired judges.

As if being lorded over by this privileged elite was not enough, any semblance of justice we might have expected is dispensed by the Lords’ ermine-robed chums in the judiciary.  Along with every Bishop, Lord, General and MP, the spiritual home of these esteemed judges is in Westminster Abbey. 

Above all, this is a ceremonial centre designed to perpetuate the indivisible  unity between Lord God, the Church, the monarchy , the Union and the legislature. It is only fitting then that it should also host the annual ceremony - known as the Judges’ Service -  attended by some 300 senior judges, the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Chancellor, as well as an assortment of senior barristers and government officials.

At the service for the 2024 ceremony, the tone was set by the following invocation from Archdeacon Sheila Watson: 

“Let us pray for this United Kingdom, for its unity, peace, and concord; for Charles our King, and for all members of the Royal Family; for both houses of Parliament, and all who bear responsibility in the ordering of our society; “

At a stroke, this unabashed pledge of subservience to the high-and-mighty shredded any pretence of independence of the judiciary. How is it remotely possible for the highest courts in the land to be independent whilst simultaneously swearing allegiance to a system of governance based upon class privilege and imperial heritage?

The judiciary’s affinity with all these ancient institutions of the ruling class, goes well beyond its oath of allegiance to Lord God, King Charles and the Union.   It is permanently present in a dress code using mediaeval costumes and whigs, designed historically to invoke fear, servility and deference,  This is is coupled with  an equally  feudal nomenclature whereby serious offences are handled by Crown Courts and all judges must be addressed either as Your Honour or My Lord/Lady.  Being closer to God in this profession also yields considerable material benefits, with high court judges' salaries ranging from £174,000 to £280,000 per year, the latter being the salary of the President of the UK Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court is now the UK’s ultimate judicial arbiter. It was preceded by an Appellate Committee of the House of Lord s comprising 12 senior judges  known as the Law Lords. By their own admission, this latter arrangement compromised their supposed independence.

The separation  of the new court of appeal from Parliament – and especially from the House of Lords – was codified by the creation of a new physical space where the Supreme Court could sit separately and  be open more to public scrutiny.

Even so, the new home of the Supreme Court, the Middlesex Guildhall, sits in Parliament Square. Although It was painstakingly renovated to make it a more suitable venue  for a court,. it’s law library still draws inspiration from the Gainsborough portrait of the 1^st Duke of Northumberland, head of one of the most powerful dynasties in northern England since medieval times.The current Duke of Northumberland, Ralph Percy, has inherited 120,000 acres of land valued between £800 million and £1 billion and combined with liquid assets of £520 million.

The privileged commoners

The House of Commons, which for centuries stood against universal suffrage, is still home to the most archaic traditions and practices that venerate its royal subservience and imbue it with a sense of class rule and privilege. That aside, anyone watching a parliamentary debate, cannot help but see it for the fraud that it is.   Either it is packed to the gills where the Right Honourable Members confront each other like rival packs of wolves baying for each other’s blood or, just as frequently, it presents us with the equally unedifying spectacle of a handful of MPs talking to a near empty chamber.

The costs of servicing this farce are even more astronomical than those required for the upper chamber. The total expenditure on the House of Commons for the year 2024-25 came to a staggering £547 million, of which almost £20 million was consumed by MPs expenses. Part of those expenses was the subsidy for the Members Dining Room which offered a 3-course meal for £7.50, with à la carte options up to £11.80.

Even this total of £547 million did not include the exorbitant salaries of all MPs. With each of the 650 MPs earning an annual salary of £91,346, this added an extra £59.4 million to the bill. However, even that is only a fraction of their potential benefits. For the 75 London-based MPs the allowances are as follows: (Not all allowances, such as staffing,  are claimed in full)

Salary	£91,346
Accommodation Costs London Area (rent)	26,840
Caring responsibility (per dependent)	6,120
London Area Living Payment	4,435
Staffing Costs London-Area MPs	252,870
Office Costs London-Area MPs	33,840
Start up supplement	6,000
Select committee chairs additional salary	17,354
Winding-up costs	15,285
Possible annual total	£454,090
There is no official figure for the actual cost

 The governmental gravy train offers even greater rewards.  A junior minister, for example,  will earn a further £24,000 on top of their salary and, if you manage to climb higher up the greasy pole, you can top your salary by as much as £80,000. 

These gold plated career rungs  also comprise several layers of governmental bureaucracy made up of 240 civil servants who work directly for the cabinet office and a further 40 civil servants attending to the needs of  the Treasury.  Most of these are Senior Civil Servants on a salary band of £130,000 – £209,000.

The business of government is not strictly big business, but it does consume a huge portion  of the  public purse that lines the pockets of every career politician. Multiple homes, walk-in  wardrobes adorned with Saville Row suits, luxury chauffeur-driven cars, dinner invites from the great and the good and, to round it off, a  big fat bank balance  -  these are the rewards that await all those in this basest of base professions

Centuries of experience have proven that this is not a system amenable to reform. Even rhe extension of adult suffrage was the product of titanic battles during the 19th and 20th centuries. To really drain the Westminster swamp will require a radical overhaul of its basic institutions, beginning with toppling the monarchy, abolishing the House of Lords, and removing all privileges associated with public representation.

These would be the minimum requirements of an entirely different system and the creation of a genuine parliament of the people.