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By November 2015, just six months after being elected as an MP, Angela Rayner’s reputation was rising.
She had made a well-received maiden speech in which she expressed her pride at being Ashton-under-Lyne’s first ever woman MP, and promised to do ‘all in my power’ to live up to her predecessors.
‘Of course, I could never fill their shoes — mine tend to have three-inch heels and to be rather more colourful — but I walk in their footsteps,’ she quipped, adding more seriously: ‘I lay claim to being the only Member of Parliament ever to have worked as a home carer.
‘Perhaps I am also the only Member who, at the age of 16 and pregnant, was told in no uncertain terms that I would never amount to anything. If only those people could see me now!’
Summing up, she said: ‘I will always tell it how it is — my constituents deserve no less — and I will do so in my own little northern way.’
She had made a well-received maiden speech in which she expressed her pride at being Ashton-under-Lyne’s first ever woman MP
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Her working-class background and straight talking had also caught the attention of the party’s recently — and unexpectedly — elected new leader, ardent socialist Jeremy Corbyn.
So it was unfortunate that her penchant for ‘telling it how it is’ and fondness for ‘three-inch heels’ should then have conspired to reveal another side to her character.
She’d ordered a pair of £195 novelty Star Wars shoes with four-inch heels in advance, then reacted furiously when she learned the shop had sold out on the day of their release.
The problem was that she aired her grievance, in an error-strewn personal letter to the manager, on House of Commons notepaper — which is strictly against Parliament rules.
‘I have been a customer of yours for several years and have bought many thousands of pounds worth of shoes,’ she wrote.
‘This is not the sort of service I expect. I have only ever brought [sic] your shoes and I am loathed [sic] to do so again, or recommend your shoes to others. I am writing to let you know that treating customers in that way will only cost you more in the long term.’
In fact, the Brighton shop had always allowed customers who turned up at its doors to have first pick of any new range. The manager recalled being so ‘shaken’ by her letter that he spent some time locating a pair of the Star Wars shoes in Rayner’s size.
When he phoned to let her know he’d found some — in China — she apparently ranted at him before abruptly terminating the call.
Jeremy Corbyn is largely responsible for the speed of her climb up the ministerial ladder
A relatively trivial incident? Perhaps — but it raised questions about her character. Indeed, one former colleague says that some of Rayner’s staff soon began to expect such conduct.
‘Angela can be wild at times,’ they reflected. ‘Her judgment goes. The story about the Star Wars shoes is a classic example. It was literally a case of: “Do you know who I am?”
‘She became so jumped up and entitled. I was appalled at her behaviour, her treatment of people. She was like an unguided missile, with no thought for anyone or for her own position as an elected representative.
‘She was becoming too big for her boots at this point. What’s remarkable is that she didn’t learn from that.’
Others who worked with Rayner say they also began to detect signs of what they took to be self-importance. One recalls: ‘There was a pomposity about her. At the [party] conference in Liverpool, we were walking to a meeting and she suddenly stopped and exclaimed: “Where are all my staff?”
‘I explained that everyone was busy with work for the conference, and she said: “Well, they should be here with me. I look like I haven’t got any staff. I’m Billy No-Mates, and it doesn’t look good.”
‘She wanted people with her wherever she went — a sort of entourage — to big her up so that people would take notice of her. That was the ego going mad.
‘Staff started to take the mickey behind her back and began calling her The Diva. We’d say:
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“What’s The Diva up to today?” or “You’ll never guess what The Diva’s doing now”.’
This source continues: ‘She was doing this in the constituency as well. Staff complained that it was taking them away from their work — dealing with casework, answering the phone and emails and so on — because they had to nursemaid Angela constantly.
‘I said to her: “This can’t carry on, you need to drive yourself or ask [your husband] Mark to drive you,” and she went spare.
‘Then she mentioned [Labour MP] Jo Cox’s murder as the understandable reason for her to be accompanied all the time. Of course, it was very difficult to argue with her once Jo Cox’s name had been mentioned.’
Rayner’s appointment as Shadow Education Secretary in July 2016 was greeted in some quarters with disbelief. Some objected to the fact she had been elevated despite not appearing to have a coherent political philosophy. (‘Ideology never put food on my table,’ she has often remarked.)
Others thought she would be out of her depth. A political colleague says: ‘They respect her, but they cannot respect the way she’s prospered. They’ve almost got more respect for the Corbynistas, who at least have some ideological belief.’
Yet those close to Rayner say her underdog status actually spurred her on.
‘At every point,’ says one former colleague, ‘she has been underestimated or patronised, and that puts her in such a position of power. She thrives on it.’
She has certainly proved her detractors wrong. Less than five years after becoming an MP, Rayner was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party, and last year Sir Keir Starmer promised her the post of deputy prime minister in a future Labour government.
But Rayner is determined and ambitious. ‘I remember her talking about becoming deputy leader of the Labour Party from as far back as 2016,’ says a former colleague
Thus, depending on the result of the general election, she is poised to become the second most powerful politician in the country.
So how did Rayner — whose deprived background I will describe in detail in tomorrow’s The Mail on Sunday — achieve such a remarkably rapid ascent?
Her first break was to be appointed a shop steward for trade union Unison, while employed as a home help for Stockport Council in Greater Manchester. Over the next 13 years, she rose through the ranks to become the union’s
North-West convenor, in charge of 200,000 members.
Then, in 2015, with union backing, she won the seat of Ashton-under-Lyne. Jeremy Corbyn is largely responsible for the speed of her climb up the ministerial ladder. After becoming leader, he appointed Rayner a junior whip.
Just a few months later, in January 2016, he made her the Shadow Work and Pensions Minister. It was a challenging job for someone who’d never passed a GCSE, but she tried her best to familiarise herself with the fiendishly complicated world of annuities, retirement funds and fiscal consolidation. ‘She didn’t have any affinity for the subject,’ says a former colleague. ‘But she made a decent fist of it, because she’s good at presenting an image of competence. Some of the meetings she sat in on were turgid, arcane and full of jargon that no sane person would understand. She worked hard to give the impression she knew what she was talking about, but it was all an act, really, albeit quite a convincing one.’
During this period, Rayner backed Remain in the Brexit referendum. So did Corbyn, though it was clear he’d campaigned for it only half-heartedly. On June 26, three days after the referendum, Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn was sacked for telling Corbyn he’d lost confidence in his leadership. Incensed by Benn’s departure, a further 19 Shadow Cabinet members resigned.
The following day, Corbyn drew up a list of replacements, and Rayner was made Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities. When the list was made
