Ministerial aide resigns over 10p band

Laura Kuenssberg (above) has just broken the news on BBC 24.

We understand there is a sweepstake amongst senior Conservatives as when the first minister would resign after 1st May.  It's come earlier than anyone thought.

5.50pm: The Sheffield Hillsboro Angela Smith has quit - not the Basildon Angela Smith.

6.10pm: Jonathan Isaby - "The BBC is reporting that Angela Smith is resigning as parliamentary private secretary to Yvette Cooper over the impending abolition of the 10p rate of income tax. A principled stance, some may say, but it would seem that she has taken over a year to find her principles. Gordon Brown announced the change in his final budget as Chancellor in March 2007, and this how the Sheffield Hillsborough MP reacted to that Budget on her website at the time: "Chancellor Gordon Brown today delivered a Budget for British families," she said. "This budget is good for Sheffield, good for the country and good for ordinary working families.”

7.45pm: George Osborne responds - "Gordon Brown’s government is unravelling by the hour. Yesterday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said the Government needed to sharpen up its act. Today a senior Labour peer has, in his own words, stabbed the PM in the front, and now a member of the government is to resign because Gordon Brown’s tax con is hitting Britain’s poorest families. At a time of economic uncertainty, the public are now asking whether Gordon Brown has the authority to lead the country through difficult times."

9.15pm: After talking to Gordon Brown, Angela Smith has decided not to resign.

10pm: Statement from George Osborne: “The astonishing news that a member of the government and aide to a Treasury minister can publicly threaten to resign over Gordon Brown’s tax policy and yet remain in the government is evidence of how his authority is disintegrating.”

Comments

[powellite]

Nonentity resigns from obscurity into obscurity. Some people will do anything for publicity.

[Lancashire CFer]

A PPS resigns.... ooo I bet Brown is shaking in his boots...

[Alan S]

Serves Brown right for coordinating the resignations of PPSs against Blair in 2006.

[Rachel Joyce]

Why has it taken Labour MPs over a year to work out that doubling the tax rate on someone will make them worse off?

Either they are incredibly dim, or they are worried about the opinion polling at the moment...

[Chad Noble]

Hmmm, why haven't we been told what 100 top political insiders think about this... ;-)

Looking at her, you can't help but agree with Berlusconi.

[Bob]

I wonder if Labour MPs are worrying because so many of them (and their families) are about to find themselves on the dole or working in McDonalds (if they could even manage that)? Maybe they forsee that extra couple of hundred pounds actually meaning something soon?

[Teesbridge]

One imagines that the lady in question took so long to locate her principles because she was using a faulty moral compass.

[Will Stobart]

UPDATE: Apparently she DOESN'T intend to resign after talking to Brown.

Dithering?

[Editor]

Thanks Will. I've amended.

Tim

[James Burdett]

This lady is for turning it seems!

[Ben Surtees]

What an utter joke! Literally a case of 'not knowing if their comming or going'...

[Ross]

She appears to have adopted the Clare Short approach to making a principled resignation.

[Letters From A Tory]

You just have to laugh, you really do.

[James Maskell]

Its been reported that five ministerial aides have threatened resignation. Angela Smith is one. Who are the other four?