We might be in the middle of the summer period that journalists call silly season, but even so, the stories this August seem to be getting more and more absurd.

The latest news that has the right-wing commentariat crowing with glee is the revelation that Angela Rayner , the Housing Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, has bought a house. Or a flat, to be precise. And this is both newsworthy and scandalous, apparently, because Rayner already owns a property elsewhere.

You might well be wondering why the Deputy PM owning two homes is so controversial. It is a good question, to which the answer is not entirely clear. There are merely vague, unsubstantiated accusations of hypocrisy. Dame Priti Patel , the shadow Foreign Secretary, commented: “One rule for this condescending hypocritical

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