Having served for nine years as an MP I know how low politicians can stoop when their backs are against the wall. But the Conservative attack on Angela Rayner is one of the most grotesque spectacles of hypocrisy I’ve witnessed. On one side is a billionaire Tory peer, Lord Ashcroft, and a multi-millionaire Tory prime minister, Rishi Sunak, whose families have all avoided paying millions of pounds in UK tax as beneficiaries on Non-Dom status and who live in luxury. On the other is a woman who grew up in poverty, caring for her illiterate mother, who is now mother to a child who is registered blind, and through her own guts and character has risen to become Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. Even Rayners accusers accept that although she might have benefitted from the error that they allege, which she denies, is less than £3,000. I suppose that her attackers cannot bear the idea that they are about to lose to a woman who pulled herself up by her bootstraps and who is going to wipe the floor with them.
• Nick Boles, former Tory MP, writing into The Times.
