Angela Rayner has been re-elected as MP for Ashton-under-Lyne in the 2024 General Election and has become the UK’s new deputy prime minister.
Representing the relatively safe seat in Greater Manchester, the 44-year-old politician has ascended through the party ranks in recent years to secure her spot as deputy leader of the Labour Party.
Now, after Labour’s landslide victory at the July general election, Rayner has become the UK’s new deputy prime minister.
In her acceptance speech after winning her Ashton-under-Lyne seat, deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner said: “Today is our chance to turn the page and start a new chapter.
“To tackle the cost of living crisis and to make work pay.
“To give working people the new deal you deserve and provide homes that we need.
“To rebuild the public services on which we rely and to ensure every community across our country shares in our national success.”
But who is Angela Rayner, and what does she stand for?
Who is Angela Rayner?
Born and raised in Stockport and brought up on a council estate, Rayner’s ascent to political stardom seemed improbable when she left school at 16 with no qualifications.
Pregnant at the time, she was told she would “never amount to anything”. But now, serving alongside Sir Keir Starmer as shadow deputy prime minister, the outspoken 44-year-old is again proving the naysayers wrong.
Rayner’s professional beginnings started in social care, where she worked with elderly people before emerging as a union rep.
She was constantly questioning managers, and a colleague suggested she would make a good union rep. Despite “not knowing what a trade union was”, she was soon a senior steward, fighting against the privatisation of the home care service.
She rose through the ranks to become the most senior elected official of the trade union, Unison, and was then elected Ashton’s first female MP in 180 years in 2015.
Shortly after, she attracted a blaze of media attention when she tried to order a pair of R2D2-themed high heels and ended up threatening the store on official House of Commons notepaper when they sold out. (The affair was dubbed “Shoebacca-gate”). Despite the bumpy start, her rise was swift.
When 63 frontbenchers resigned in summer 2016 in protest at Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, she was promoted from shadow pensions minister to shadow for women and equalities, and then a few days later to shadow education secretary – the youngest MP to ever hold that role.
The education brief was personal. In her maiden Commons speech, she credited Labour’s Sure Start centres for “rescuing” her.
Later, in 2020, she was elected as deputy leader of the Labour Party.
Reflecting on her working-class background, Rayner said: “From the beginning of my working life, I’ve always stood up for working people, first as a trade union rep representing care workers and then as a regional union official. Now I use the skills I’ve developed to represent the communities of Ashton-under-Lyne.”
Rayner also faced some political challenges during her time in the Labour ranks, such as Starmer trying to demote his elected deputy in 2021. She fought him off, emerging and strengthened with an array of titles.
Rather than seeing Rayner’s outspokenness as a hindrance, Sir Keir decided to exploit it to the full as he took the election attack to Rishi Sunak’s Tories in Labour’s old Red Wall heartlands.
Angela Rayner’s criticism of the Tories
Her portfolio has come into much sharper focus ahead of next month’s election despite – or because of – her propensity for ruffling Conservative feathers.
At the 2021 Labour conference, for instance, she branded the Tories as “scum” for which she later apologised. However, she has remained unabashed about her no-holds-barred approach.
“The Tories fear me because I say it how I see it,” she said in the wake of the conference controversy in 2023, refusing to be daunted by threats of murder and rape that saw her given police protection.
She has also been dogged by political attacks laced with class prejudice and misogyny.
In one notorious instance, she was accused by an unnamed Tory of crossing and uncrossing her legs to distract Boris Johnson opposite her in the House of Commons.
Described as “feminist with a capital F”, she has been calling attention to the problem for years. She made headlines in 2019 when she declared the Conservative party “infected with sexism from top to bottom”, after Johnson defended a Tory candidate who once told women to “keep your knickers on” to avoid being raped.
Rayner has also been on the receiving end of another line of attack for her northern accent – including one email that said “you sound thick as mince”. Tory MP Michael Fabricant accused her of “squawking on” and claimed she wasn’t “capable of holding down any job which requires intellect”.
Her growing CV says otherwise, and shows a repeated ability to overcome the odds.
