Angela Rayner says council tax row was ‘deliberate smear’

Angela Rayner says council tax row was 'deliberate smear'Source: The News Agents/Global Player

Transcript

00:00Honestly, you went through that experience recently where you were in the headlines day

00:02after day after day with regards to the council tax and all that. I don't want to entertain

00:06those stories for all sorts of reasons, not least because of course we saw what the police

00:10said about it. But I just wanted to ask you, what was that like? What was that like to

00:14experience to go through?

00:15I mean, it was frustrating. There's been a number of times where, you know, I felt that,

00:19you know, whether it was misogyny or this, which I felt was, you know, it was difficult

00:25on a personal level, but it was frustrating for me because it was at a time when people,

00:29we've got a housing crisis and all they wanted to talk about is my living arrangements before

00:34as an MP and try and make it into some smitty at a time when really the government had completely

00:39failed people on housing. And I thought it was a deliberate tactic to try and stop me

00:43from being out there and speaking my mind as I do for people.

00:47You thought it was an attempt to delegitimise you, to take you out of the game?

00:50I think it was an attempt to clip my wings and to, yeah, to take the emphasis off their

00:55appalling record on housing. You know, Michael Gove was in a situation where he wasn't getting

00:59his housing reforms through his back benches. They wanted to end section 21, no for evictions.

01:05They didn't do that. They were supposed to be dealing with planning. They didn't do that.

01:09They've completely failed homeownership and renters. And I was pushing forward on that

01:14agenda and I think it was a deliberate smear. And, you know, that's a challenge because

01:18I'm not in politics for me. I know what politics can do to change people's lives because it

01:23changed my life.