Editorial: ​Angela Rayner is wholly ill-suited to be the deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom

The position of deputy prime minister of the UK barely exists – it is an honorary title that had not been used until Michael Heseltine 30 years ago.

​Even so, to be called such is a way of governments designating a politician who is considered second in seniority to the prime minister. Therefore, Angela Rayner was named last year by Sir Keir Starmer as his effective number two.

She was wholly unsuited to such a designation. Her inability to rise to a position that has the status of number two in the government is not about her much discussed working class background, it is about ability. Ms Rayner has never been able to answer hard political questions. Her inability to answer such prior to the last general election was a source of satire.

Yet Sir Keir – perhaps to show his promotion of women or maybe to reflect the fact that she is Labour deputy leader – elevated Ms Rayner above more able front-bench Labour MPs.

Her inability to rise to the level of a deputy PM has been illustrated by her handling of the on buying her property in Hove. Aside from the indignity of her going into such detail about her private life in a bid to show that she did not do wrong, Ms Rayner – we are told – was given three separate pieces of legal advice before deciding on which property tax to pay. She paid the lowest sum.

A deputy prime minister should immediately have been alert to the possibility that other advice, presumably recommending she pay the higher amount, might be pertinent. But in particular the deputy PM of a government that has increased stamp duty on second homes as way of trying to help people of modest means get a first home should have know she must be punctilious about paying the correct amount for an additional property. But not Ms Rayner.

She either lacked the ability to work this out, or she conveniently shut out considerations of propriety.