A dysfunctional week for the Tories and Labour amid honeytrap scandal and ‘tax dodging’ claims
We may have been in Easter recess the past couple of weeks, but on both sides of the party divide, there were those who did not get a rest from politics.
MP William Wragg undoubtedly had a dysfunctional week as the man at the centre of the Westminster honeytrap scandal.
He resigned the Conservative party whip as some colleagues looked on with a mixture of bemusement and anger at Number 10’s handling of the whole sorry affair.
Meanwhile, on the Labour side, deputy leader Angela Rayner can’t seem to shake off or shut down the persistent questions about whether she paid the right amount of tax when she sold her council house nearly a decade ago.
She insists she has done nothing wrong while there are Conservatives looking to weaponise the issue in this election year – with at least one local Tory councillor and other protesters this week hounding her on a visit to Teesside, with banners dubbing her a “tax dodger”‘ in the hope it will stick.
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This week in Electoral Dysfunction, Jess, Ruth and I chew over both the substance and the politics of these difficult situations and ask whether Number 10 and Labour are making tricky issues better or worse.
When it comes to Mr Wragg, who admitted sharing MPs’ and journalists’ phone numbers with someone he met on Grindr who had “compromising things” on him, there is widespread incredulity that a sitting MP would do such a thing, overlaid with some anger over Number 10’s handling of it – with some arguing that Rishi Sunak failed to move quickly enough to take control of the story, suspend Mr Wragg and look decisive.
Instead, ministers were dispatched to defend the MP as ”courageous”, while it was Mr Wragg himself who decided to give up the Tory whip his week. He is now sitting as an independent MP.
“Madness [to send pictures and give out personal details] and yet our leadership decided to defend him,” one former cabinet minister texted this week. “If it wasn’t so stupid. It would be genuinely funny. The script of the Thick Of It. A few of us messaged centre at weekend to say WTF. His resignation was inevitable.”
Ruth agrees, and says – while she has sympathy for Mr Wragg being in this “horrible situation” – that he is “somebody in an important job who has responsibilities” to the place he works and people with whom he works.
“The idea you throw all of that out of the window for a quick shag or to exchange a pic is so wilfully irresponsible that actually I don’t think [much of] the level of understanding, or acceptance or excuse that the government made on his behalf.
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Sexting MP ‘right to quit’
“I think it’s bad judgement and I think this is another one where you look at the judgement of the prime minister and go, you know this, this doesn’t fly.”
But aside from questions about the political handling from the centre – and there are issues around safeguarding a vulnerable MP, which I talk about in the pod – there are also wider questions, again, around MPs’ security in a world where contacts count and phone numbers are currency.
“People give numbers out all the time. Having people’s phone numbers is a massive currency in Westminster,” explains Jess, who points out that MPs are using personal phones in parliament.
“The trouble is that I think people think we have parliamentary phones but it’s just my personal phone, so they don’t own it. I’m way more careful about my parliamentary computer and the iPad they gave me.
“So I imagine what will come out of this is probably that we all have to have parliamentary-issued phones that are locked down by the security services. I imagine that’s where it’s going.”
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Starmer: Rayner tax story is ‘smear’
With a sex scandal engulfing the Conservatives once more, on the other side of the political divide, Ms Rayner is struggling to put to bed questions over whether she paid the right amount of tax when she sold her council house nearly a decade ago, before she became an MP.
Ms Rayner has made it clear she took tax advice at the time and has done nothing wrong, while Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has come out to defend her and accused the Tories of trying to smear her over a story with no substance.
Neither Ruth, Jess nor I think the story is getting much cut through, largely because of the complexity of it all, but that isn’t stopping the Conservatives pursuing Ms Rayner with real ferocity.
Ruth thinks the Tories are going in hard for a number of reasons.
First, she thinks Labour “hasn’t had this level of scrutiny for a long time”, so this is an opportunity for the party machine to “try to flex its muscles”. Second, Ms Rayner has been used as “an attack dog” for the party on these issues so “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”.
Read more:
Angela Rayner’s tax affairs – a smear or a real trust problem for Labour?
Michelle Donelan: Minister’s legal fees take total cost of libel case to £34,000
She also argues that “there is a purpose to man-mark her off the pitch”, but it won’t change the public’s view of Ms Rayner: “She’ll be a Marmite politician for the whole of her career because of the strength of her character. The people who love her will love her and the people who can’t stand her will turn the TV off when she comes on.”
Jess concedes the issue is hurting Ms Rayner but thinks she will ride it out and believes there’s a risk that “if it starts to look like the Conservatives are picking on her, it has a counter effect”.
Listen to Beth Rigby, Jess Phillips and Ruth Davidson as they unravel the spin in a new weekly podcast from Sky News
But, in a similar way to the Beergate story that hounded Sir Keir and Ms Rayner during 2021 – they were accused, and cleared, of breaking lockdown rules in Durham – the Conservatives show little sign of letting go of Ms Rayner or her tax affairs until they have wrung every single drop out of it.
And if, in an election year, they can try to make “tax dodger” land – or at least disrupt her campaigning – Conservative campaign headquarters will chalk it up as a win.
So while the hope from Ms Rayner’s and Sir Keir’s respective offices is that the story will burn itself out, it may be that Ms Rayner, in the end, has to do more to put it properly to bed: on that, all three of us agree.
Politics
UK and France have ‘shared responsibility’ to tackle illegal migration, Emmanuel Macron says
Emmanuel Macron has said the UK and France have a “shared responsibility” to tackle the “burden” of illegal migration, as he urged co-operation between London and Paris ahead of a crunch summit later this week.
Addressing parliament in the Palace of Westminster on Tuesday, the French president said the UK-France summit would bring “cooperation and tangible results” regarding the small boats crisis in the Channel.
Politics latest: Lord Norman Tebbit dies, aged 94
King Charles III at the State Banquet for President of France Emmanuel Macron. Pic: PA
Mr Macron – who is the first European leader to make a state visit to the UK since Brexit – told the audience that while migrants’ “hope for a better life elsewhere is legitimate”, “we cannot allow our countries’ rules for taking in people to be flouted and criminal networks to cynically exploit the hopes of so many individuals with so little respect for human life”.
“France and the UK have a shared responsibility to address irregular migration with humanity, solidarity and fairness,” he added.
Looking ahead to the UK-France summit on Thursday, he promised the “best ever cooperation” between France and the UK “to fix today what is a burden for our two countries”.
Sir Keir Starmer will hope to reach a deal with his French counterpart on a “one in, one out” migrant returns deal at the key summit on Thursday.
King Charles also addressed the delegations at a state banquet in Windsor Castle on Tuesday evening, saying the summit would “deepen our alliance and broaden our partnerships still further”.
King Charles speaking at state banquet welcoming Macron.
Sitting next to President Macron, the monarch said: “Our armed forces will cooperate even more closely across the world, including to support Ukraine as we join together in leading a coalition of the willing in defence of liberty and freedom from oppression. In other words, in defence of our shared values.”
In April, British officials confirmed a pilot scheme was being considered to deport migrants who cross the English Channel in exchange for the UK accepting asylum seekers in France with legitimate claims.
The two countries have engaged in talks about a one-for-one swap, enabling undocumented asylum seekers who have reached the UK by small boat to be returned to France.
👉Listen to Politics at Sam and Anne’s on your podcast app👈       
Britain would then receive migrants from France who would have a right to be in the UK, like those who already have family settled here.
The small boats crisis is a pressing issue for the prime minister, given that more than 20,000 migrants crossed the English Channel to the UK in the first six months of this year – a rise of almost 50% on the number crossing in 2024.
President Macron greets Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle at his address to parliament in Westminster.
Elsewhere in his speech, the French president addressed Brexit, and said the UK could not “stay on the sidelines” despite its departure from the European Union.
He said European countries had to break away from economic dependence on the US and China.
Read more:
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Public finances in ‘relatively vulnerable position’, OBR warns
“Our two countries are among the oldest sovereign nations in Europe, and sovereignty means a lot to both of us, and everything I referred to was about sovereignty, deciding for ourselves, choosing our technologies, our economy, deciding our diplomacy, and deciding the content we want to share and the ideas we want to share, and the controversies we want to share.
“Even though it is not part of the European Union, the United Kingdom cannot stay on the sidelines because defence and security, competitiveness, democracy – the very core of our identity – are connected across Europe as a continent.”
Emmanuel Macron addressing parliament in the Palace of Westminster’s Royal Gallery was a highly anticipated moment in the long history of our two nations.
That story – the conflict and a historic Anglo-French agreement that ended centuries of feuding, the Entente Cordiale – adorn the walls of this great hall.
Looming over the hundreds of MPs and peers who had gathered in the heat to hear the French president speak, hang two monumental paintings depicting British victories in the Napoleonic wars, while the glass stand in the room commemorates the 408 Lords who lost their lives fighting for Europe in two world wars.
Politics latest: UK and France will get ‘tangible results’ on migration
The French president came to parliament as the first European leader to be honoured with a state visit since Brexit.
It was the first address of a French president to parliament since 2008, and Mr Macron used it to mark what he called a new era in Anglo-Franco relations.
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Sky News’ political correspondent Tamara Cohen was watching Emmanuel Macron’s speech. She highlights the president saying he wants to see tangible results on migration.
Peers and MPs cheered with delight when he confirmed France would loan the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK in the run-up to the anniversary of William the Conqueror’s birthday.
“I have to say, it took properly more years to deliver that project than all the Brexit texts,” he joked as former prime minister Theresa May watched on from the front row
From Brexit to migration, European security, to a two-state solution and the recognition of Palestine, Mr Macron did not shy away from thorny issues, as he turned the page on Brexit tensions woven through Anglo-French relations in recent years, in what one peer described to me as a “very political speech rather than just the usual warm words”.
Emmanuel Macron addresses parliament
He also used this address to praise Sir Keir Starmer, sitting in the audience, for his leadership on security and Ukraine, and his commitment to the international order and alliances forged from the ashes of the Second World War. For that, he received a loud ovation from the gathered parliamentarians.
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Macron’s first-ever state visit: personal or political?
Read more:
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Public finances in ‘relatively vulnerable position’
The test now for Sir Keir is whether he can turn his deft diplomatic work in recent months with Mr Macron into concrete action to give him a much-needed win on the domestic front, particularly after his torrid week on welfare.
The government hopes that France’s aim for “cooperation and tangible results” at the upcoming political summit as part of this state visit, will give Starmer a much-needed boost.
The PM is attempting to drive-down crossings by negotiating a one-in one-out return treaty with France.
Under this plan, those crossing the Channel illegally will be sent back to France in exchange for Britain taking in an asylum seeker with a family connection in the UK.
But as I understand it, the deal is still in the balance, with some EU countries unhappy about France and the UK agreeing on a bilateral deal.
Politics
UK and France have ‘shared responsibility’ to tackle illegal migration, Emmanuel Macron says
Emmanuel Macron has said the UK and France have a “shared responsibility” to tackle the “burden” of illegal migration, as he urged co-operation between London and Paris ahead of a crunch summit later this week.
Addressing parliament in the Palace of Westminster on Tuesday, the French president said the UK-France summit would bring “cooperation and tangible results” regarding the small boats crisis in the Channel.
Politics latest: Lord Norman Tebbit dies, aged 94
Mr Macron – who is the first European leader to make a state visit to the UK since Brexit – told the audience that while migrants’ “hope for a better life elsewhere is legitimate”, “we cannot allow our countries’ rules for taking in people to be flouted and criminal networks to cynically exploit the hopes of so many individuals with so little respect for human life”.
“France and the UK have a shared responsibility to address irregular migration with humanity, solidarity and fairness,” he added.
Looking ahead to the UK-France summit on Thursday, he promised the “best ever co-operation” between France and the UK “to fix today what is a burden for our two countries”.
Sir Keir Starmer will hope to reach a deal with his French counterpart on a “one in, one out” migrant returns deal at the key summit on Thursday.
King Charles also addressed the France-UK summit at the state banquet in Windsor Castle on Tuesday evening, saying it would “deepen our alliance and broaden our partnerships still further”.
King Charles speaking at state banquet welcoming Macron.
Sitting next to President Macron, the monarch said: “Our armed forces will cooperate even more closely across the world, including to support Ukraine as we join together in leading a coalition of the willing in defence of liberty and freedom from oppression. In other words, in defence of our shared values.”
In April, British officials confirmed a pilot scheme was being considered to deport migrants who cross the English Channel in exchange for the UK accepting asylum seekers in France with legitimate claims.
The two countries have engaged in talks about a one-for-one swap, enabling undocumented asylum seekers who have reached the UK by small boat to be returned to France.
👉Listen to Politics at Sam and Anne’s on your podcast app👈       
Britain would then receive migrants from France who would have a right to be in the UK, like those who already have family settled here.
The small boats crisis is a pressing issue for the prime minister, given that more than 20,000 migrants crossed the English Channel to the UK in the first six months of this year – a rise of almost 50% on the number crossing in 2024.
President Macron greets Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle at his address to parliament in Westminster.
Elsewhere in his speech, the French president addressed Brexit, and said the UK could not “stay on the sidelines” despite its departure from the European Union.
He said European countries had to break away from economic dependence on the US and China.
Read more:
French police forced to watch on as migrants attempt crossing
Public finances in ‘relatively vulnerable position’, OBR warns
“Our two countries are among the oldest sovereign nations in Europe, and sovereignty means a lot to both of us, and everything I referred to was about sovereignty, deciding for ourselves, choosing our technologies, our economy, deciding our diplomacy, and deciding the content we want to share and the ideas we want to share, and the controversies we want to share.
“Even though it is not part of the European Union, the United Kingdom cannot stay on the sidelines because defence and security, competitiveness, democracy – the very core of our identity – are connected across Europe as a continent.”
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