Boyd's Own Paper: EXCLUSIVE!

Fly-on-the-wall drone transcript of Rayner interrogation

In a new first for BOP, the deployment of the TsingTao Fly Drone Mk2 has paid enormous dividends as it sends back a transcript of the entire investigation process conducted by Sir Laurie Magnus:

Knock on Door:

LM: Excuse me, can I come in please Deputy Prime Minister?

AR: Yes of course, do you mind if I call you Laurie? No, no sit here on the sofa by me, it’s much comfier than that horrid chair. Now, what would you like to know, Oh I’m sorry, is that some dust from the sofa on your trousers? Can I help?

LM: I have to ask you Deputy Prime…

AR No no Laurie please call me Angie

LM: Oh right, er, OK. Angie, as you know I’m here to ask you some searching questions about this whole stamp duty thing, which I’m sure is a ghastly mistake, but I do need to hear your explanation of how we got to this point.

AR: You’re so wise, Laurie. It was all a terrible mistake. I tried to call HMRC on the usual public enquiry number but couldn’t get through for some reason. I tried again and again, I was so desperate to pay the right amount. So then I thought I’d go and ask my absolute best friend in the whole of parliament, Rachel, but before I could disturb her, I met someone in the corridor outside the chancellor’s office, who had just come out. I asked them if they knew anything about tax, and they said they had paid a tax when they got on the boat in Calais, and I said what about stamp duty? They said, what’s that? She told me she was a Romanian refreshment assistant, and they don’t pay taxes there or here. She suggested - and it sounded very professional to my ears - that we do the same. Or words to that effect. She certainly seemed to know what she was talking about, and she had just left the Chancellor’s office.

LM: Well thank you for that frank and entirely plausible explanation. I shall report positively to the PM immediately, and tell him that I think you acted with integrity and with a dedicated and exemplary commitment to public service. Of course there is the outside chance tht he might think the advice you received was not quite as specialised as you thought in which case he might conclude that you would benefit, a la “Mortgage” Mandelson, from a few weeks on the (back) benches. But it really won’t be any worse than that.

As we now know, the crisis is officially over, and it can all be blamed on the former leader of the House???

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