If you’d checked the betting sites last week for the odds on Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner becoming the next party leader, things would have been looking pretty good. Not this week. Her odds have halved — Betfair now shows her implied chances at less than 5%.
It would be mean to be definitive about the source of the shift. But a reasonable guess is that it has something to do with her taxes. A few years ago Rayner sold a house she had bought under the UK’s right to buy scheme for a neat profit of £48,500 ($61,522). She appears to have paid no capital gains tax on that cash. She says that none was due on the basis that “it was my home and the only one I owned.” That sounds perfectly sensible — the UK doesn’t charge capital gains tax on anyone’s main home.
