'It's not a good look' Some Tory MPs uneasy over line of personal attack

One of the most senior politicians in the Labour party is facing persistent questions about her personal affairs.

- Pippa Crerar

The police are investigating after pressure from a Tory MP, despite initially saying there was no case to answer. The story has been relentlessly pursued by the rightwing press.

If the playbook sounds familiar, that's because the Conservative MP pulling the strings behind the Angela Rayner living arrangements saga is the same one who consistently led the charge over the "beergate" controversy involving Keir Starmer.

Back then, Richard Holden was an ambitious Tory backbencher, representing the seat of North West Durham, who spotted an opportunity to cause some trouble for the Labour leader and deflect attention from Boris Johnson after the Partygate scandal erupted.

As a result of that operation which ended with Starmer being cleared by police - Holden's reputation within the Tory party as a tenacious attack dog grew until Rishi Sunak appointed him chairman in November 2023.

This time, his team's target is Rayner. The strategy is similar look for an opportunity to land a blow and then repeatedly punch the wound, drawing out the pain for as long as possible by drawing in the authorities, even if she's ultimately found to have done nothing wrong.

The allegations over Rayner's living arrangements in the 2010s and the sale of her former council house in Stockport first surfaced in mid-February in an unauthorised biography, Red Queen, by the billionaire Tory peer Lord Ashcroft, which was serialised in the Mail on Sunday and pushed hard by Holden's CCHQ operation.

The paper's story, the first of 79 on the subject over the following two months, accused Rayner of hypocrisy after the book revealed she made a £48,500 profit on her ex-council house thanks to the right-to-buy policy.

The attack line gained little traction, so the Tories moved on to allegations that Rayner may have lied about the location of her primary residence to avoid paying capital gains tax on the sale.