Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, has revealed she is “doing the groundwork now” to ensure that the party’s next leader is a woman.
The shadow secretary of state for the future of work admitted that she would “certainly be pushing” for Sir Keir Starmer’s successor to be female, but she joked that at the moment she was “happy with Keir because I get to be the woman in charge”.
Speaking ahead of International Women’s Day on Tuesday, Rayner was asked if Labour was ready for a female leader and whether she would consider standing for the role herself.
She told Times Radio: “I think the Labour party is ready and I’m doing the groundwork now to make sure it’s ready by supporting other women and saying you can achieve whatever you want to achieve.
“And if I was to answer you and say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to stand for the leader of the Labour party,’ I hope that that would encourage other women to say, ‘I’m going to stand,’ not say, ‘Oh, well, Angie’s standing so I can’t.”
She added: “I think we’re ready for it and I’d certainly be pushing for it. But at the moment I’m happy with Keir because I get to be the woman in charge.”
The Ashton-under-Lyne MP admitted it was more difficult to be a woman in politics than it was for men due to misogyny and abuse and threats in person and on social media. She said: “It’s a fact. And that’s across the political spectrum.
“You see the misogyny, unfortunately, that is around that means that women do get it more difficult.”
Rayner became deputy leader in April 2020 having been a longstanding member of Jeremy Corbyn’s cabinet. “I thought that when I became deputy leader, that the abuse and the threats that I got was because I’m deputy leader of the Labour party,” she said.
“It actually transpires that many women, even women who were just MPs, without any frontbench role, are getting levels of threats that I get, and I find that absolutely astonishing. It is not unique to me, and that in itself is quite a worrying factor.
“It’s not because of who I am, or because of what I say, and I hear it from across the other side of the House as well. Many Conservative MPs, female MPs, get exactly the same.”
Rayner also acknowledged that while she and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer were not yet “best of mates”, they had found a way to complement each other.
