The Mail and the Tories' regretful attack on Rayner

To cover politics for the BBC is to be pilloried on social media by the public and lobbied in private by the parties over almost every aspect of your coverage – which stories you cover, in what order, from what angle, with which guests.

It is simply part of the job, if an unappealing one, to have pretty much every call you make questioned. In these angry political times, the tone of those questions has amped up somewhat too – while the heat might not help anything, the scrutiny probably does. Given the huge reach of the BBC’s output, and its status as a public service and publicly owned broadcaster, it merits the extra attention.

That said, it is hard not to conclude that the BBC sometimes finds itself in no-win situations, even when it doesn’t do anything all that wrong. This seems to be what is happening with the Beeb’s coverage of the Angela Rayner “scandal” over the sale of her former home – which provoked an angry intervention by John O’Farrell on Laura Kuenssberg’s show on Sunday morning.

One thing worth noting is that the criticism of the BBC – and of Kuenssberg’s own show – aired on the BBC, keeping up the proud tradition of the BBC criticising itself. This is, though, likely healthy and it would be wise for the BBC to make it clear O’Farrell is still welcome on their air.

His criticism, though, is not necessarily merited. Whatever you think of the allegations against Rayner (more on these soon), the deputy leader of the opposition is facing police investigation. To not cover that would be negligent and would attract justified criticism from the right.

Prior to the Greater Manchester Police investigation being announced, Newsnight’s Nick Watt had asked Rayner if she would resign should she be found to have broken the law (as Keir Starmer promised to do over a confected lockdown-era scandal), to which she said she would.

However, before that footage was broadcast, Labour complained to Newsnight that given there was at the time no police investigation that the question shouldn’t have been asked and shouldn’t be aired – and the BBC agreed, publishing the footage only after the police announced their investigation.

An organisation blindly following up a Daily Mail scandal, or actively trying to spur it on, would not have made that choice. There is a case that it shows the value of a media organisation trying to be fair and to serve the public as neutrally as possible.

None of this, of course, is to suggest either the Daily Mail investigation or the efforts of a Conservative MP to get the police to investigate Rayner have much merit at all – and their drive to get Rayner may blow up in their faces.

No-one suggests that Rayner benefitted more to the tune of less than £2,000 or so if there was anything questionable about the sale of her old home. Once you unpick the story, it starts to look a lot like the complexities of real people’s lives: she lived in a council house, bought it, continued to live in it, then got married to someone who already owned a home down the road. For a time, Rayner’s brother seems to have lived in the home (many “normal” people have either put up a relative for a time, or been put up by one), and as Rayner divorced, that home was sold.

Against the elaborate (if legal) tax avoidance structures used by Conservative politicians and donors, or the millions involved in PPE or Covid loans scandals, this is likely to be shrugged off by most voters. Even if Rayner is found to have acted wrongly, the facts just don’t line up to a politician on the make. Rayner comes across as impressively normal – by trying to turn this molehill into a mountain, the Mail just looks out of touch with its own readers.

Similarly, the police were only spurred into investigating the issue – for electoral law offences – after being publicly called to do so by a Conservative MP. The UK’s electoral law is hopelessly out of date, complex, and it is near impossible to secure convictions, especially given the long time period since this alleged offence.

The police investigation will do as it will, and Greater Manchester Police hardly had any good options by the time the complaint was public. But most of us have a story of having our phone stolen, or knowing someone who was mugged, or burgled, with next-to-no police investigation.

Tory MPs urging the force to dedicate resources – and political investigations tend to need the time of senior officers – to Rayner might not play as well with the public as either the Tories or the Mail imagines. It is important that politicians are held to account, but the public can spot opportunism when they see it.There is a chance, of course, this story could bring Rayner down. There could be some worse aspect we don’t yet know, or she could be unlucky with the detail – and once a police investigation exists, the BBC of course needs to ask about it. But with what we know now, it feels like the Mail and the Tories that could come to regret pushing this story quite as hard as they have.