Who is Angela Rayner? The story behind the country’s possible next deputy PM
Angela Rayner is set to become the UK’s deputy prime minister if Labour wins the next general election.
With Labour’s annual conference starting this weekend, here’s what you need to know about the party’s deputy leader – from her early life and career in politics to the abuse and controversy she has faced.
Early life and career
Born in Stockport in 1980, Ms Rayner was brought up on a council estate. She left school at 16 with no qualifications and pregnant with her first son.
She says she was told she would “never amount to anything”.
“When I was young, we didn’t have books because my mother couldn’t read or write,” Ms Rayner said in an interview with the Financial Times.
She told the newspaper she could easily have been taken into care and admitted she felt “resentment” because, as a child, she had to look after her mother, who had bipolar disorder.
After giving birth, Ms Rayner went to college part-time, studying British sign language and social care.
Soon after becoming a care worker for the local council, she was put forward as a union rep.
“I was mouthy and I would take no messing from management,” Ms Rayner said.
From there, she became a full-time union official and rose through the ranks to become Unison’s convenor in the North West, representing 200,000 workers.
Ms Rayner married Unison official Mark Rayner in 2010. The couple separated in 2020.
She has three sons and in 2017, she became a grandmother.
Life in politics
Angela Rayner on the Labour frontbench with Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott in 2017
Ms Rayner entered parliament In 2015, when she became the first woman MP in the 180-year history of her Ashton-under-Lyne constituency.
She went on to hold the position of shadow pensions minister, before becoming a member of the shadow cabinet, holding the education and women and equalities briefs.
She was elected as deputy leader of the Labour Party in 2020 but was sacked as party chair following poor results in the English local elections.
But she pushed back against Keir Starmer’s attempts to demote her and was eventually given a role as shadow minister for the cabinet office, as well as a newly created post as shadow secretary for the future of work.
In September 2023, she was appointed shadow levelling up secretary in a reshuffle aimed at putting the “strongest possible players on the pitch” ahead of the next election.
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‘Principles would not have fed me’
Ms Rayner is known for being on the left of the Labour Party and has described herself as a socialist “but not a Corbynite”.
But she has also defended compromises she has made with colleagues in the shadow cabinet, saying she will not let her principles “block” her party from getting elected.
Speaking to the Beth Rigby Interviews programme in January, she said it was “not about getting rid of my principles”.
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Beth Rigby interviews Angela Rayner
But she added: “When I was a free school meals kid, principles would not have fed me. It was the free school meals programme that Labour brought in.”
She said the only way for those projects to become a reality was a win at the ballot box, meaning the “overriding principle” for her was “delivery”.
Abuse and controversy
Ms Rayner has received rape and death threats and has talked about how she had panic buttons installed at her home.
In 2021, a man was sentenced after he admitted sending a threatening email telling her to “watch your back and your kids”.
Separately, on the day of the sentence, Ms Rayner apologised “unreservedly” for calling Conservatives “scum” during her party’s conference the previous month.
She had initially refused to apologise but later said she would not use the same language again having reflected on the “threats and abuse” that often feature in politics.
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September 2021: Angela Rayner defends calling Tories ‘scum’
In 2022, a Mail On Sunday article claimed Tory MPs had accused her of a “Basic Instinct” ploy to distract Boris Johnson by crossing and uncrossing her legs.
Describing the article as “disgusting”, Ms Rayner said the piece “wasn’t just about me as a woman, it was also steeped in classism and about where I come from, where I grew up”.
The article received a huge backlash, with even Boris Johnson saying while he did not agree with her politically, he “deplore[d] the misogyny directed at her anonymously”.
GD Culture Group (GDC), a Nasdaq-listed holding company focused on livestreaming, e-commerce and artificial intelligence-powered digital human technology, plans to raise up to $300 million for a cryptocurrency treasury reserve.
In a May 12 statement, GDC and its subsidiary, AI Catalysis, announced entering into a common stock purchase agreement with a British Virgin Islands limited liability company to sell up to $300 million of its common stock.
The proceeds from the stock sale will be used to fund the firm’s crypto treasury, which will include purchases of Bitcoin (BTC) and the Official Trump (TRUMP) token.
“Under this initiative, and subject to certain limitations, GDC intends to allocate a significant portion of the proceeds from any share sales under the facility to the acquisition, long-term holding, and integration of crypto assets into its core treasury operations,” the company said in the announcement.
GDC described the strategy as a move to align with the broader “decentralization transformation.”
Founded in 2016, GDC is a micro-cap company with a current $34 million market capitalization, according to Nasdaq data.
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GDC’s chairman and CEO, Xiaojian Wang, said the initiative builds on the company’s strengths in digital technologies and positions it for a blockchain-powered industrial shift.
“GDC’s adoption of crypto assets as treasury reserve holdings is a deliberate strategy that reflects both current industry trends and our unique strengths in digital technologies and the livestreaming e-commerce ecosystem,” Wang said.
The stock offering was announced over a month after the firm received a noncompliance warning from Nasdaq related to its stockholders’ equity. The notice indicated that the firm reported stockholders’ equity of only $2,643, well below the minimum requirement of $2.5 million.
The firm was given until May 4 to submit a plan to comply with the listing requirements. If accepted by Nasdaq, the compliance plan will allow up to 180 days from the notification period to comply with the requirements.
The Nevada-based company joins a small but growing group of public firms that are allocating part of their balance sheets to crypto assets.
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Trump token dinner planned for top holders
GDC’s announcement coincides with an upcoming high-profile event tied to the Trump token project. The 25 largest holders of TRUMP tokens are set to attend a private dinner at the White House on May 22.
However, the TRUMP memecoin project said in a May 12 X post that it has stopped considering additional purchases for the dinner and that the attendees had been notified to apply for background checks.
According to data provided on the project’s leaderboard, the top 220 wallets held more than 13.7 million tokens as of May 12, worth about $174 million at the time of publication.
Some US lawmakers have criticized the dinner. Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis reportedly said that the idea of the US president offering exclusive access for people willing to pay “gives [her] pause.”
Crypto regulation experts also fear that the Trump family’s crypto endeavors may trigger more regulatory scrutiny by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, as politically affiliated memecoins introduce a new challenge for crypto legislation.
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A 21-year-old man has been arrested over a series of arson attacks, police have said, after a fire at a house owned by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
The suspect was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life, according to the Metropolitan Police.
He remains in custody.
Emergency services were called to fires at the doors of two homes in north London within 24 hours of each other – one just after 1.35am on Monday in Kentish Town and the other on Sunday in Islington. Both properties are linked to Sir Keir.
Police are investigating links to several fires, which they are treating as suspicious. Pic: LNP
Detectives were also checking a vehicle fire last Thursday on the same street as the Kentish Town property to see whether it is connected.
Part of the area was cordoned off as police and London Fire Brigade (LFB) investigators examined the scene.
Neighbours described hearing a loud bang and said police officers were looking for a projectile.
Emergency services were deployed to the scene in Kentish Town, north London, on Monday. Pic: PA
Pic: PA
The prime minister is understood to still own the home, which was damaged by fire on Monday, but nobody was hurt. Pictures showed scorching at the entrance to the property.
Sir Keir used to live there before he and his family moved into 10 Downing Street after Labour won last year’s general election. It is believed the property is being rented out.
In the early hours of Sunday, firefighters dealt with a small fire at the front door of a house converted into flats in nearby Islington, which is also linked to the prime minister.
Counter-terror police are leading the investigation. Pic: LNP
In a statement, police said: “As a precaution and due to the property having previous connections with a high-profile public figure, officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command are leading the investigation into this fire.
“Enquiries are ongoing to establish what caused it. All three fires are being treated as suspicious at this time, and enquiries remain ongoing.”
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The prime minister’s official spokesman said: “I can only say that the prime minister thanks the emergency services for their work and it is subject to a live investigation. So I can’t comment any further.”
Kemi Badenoch has condemned the suspected arson attacks.
Writing on X, the Conservative leader said: “This is a shocking incident. My thoughts are with the prime minister and his family. No one should face these sorts of threats, let alone people in public service.
“It’s an attack on our democracy and must never be tolerated.”
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick told Sky News on Tuesday: “It’s important that the prime minister and anyone in public life has their family, their homes, protected.
“It is absolutely wrong, disgraceful, for any individual to take the kind of action that we saw against the prime minister’s home.”
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed two key cryptocurrency-related bills that aimed to expand the state’s involvement in digital assets while signing a strict regulatory measure targeting Bitcoin ATMs.
On May 12, Hobbs rejected Senate Bill 1373, which sought to establish a Digital Assets Strategic Reserve Fund. The fund would have allowed Arizona to hold crypto assets obtained through seizures or legislative allocations.
“Current volatility in cryptocurrency markets does not make a prudent fit for general fund dollars,” she stated in her veto letter. “I have already signed legislation this session which allows the state to utilize cryptocurrency without placing general fund dollars at risk,” she added.
That decision followed her veto of Senate Bill 1025 — the more ambitious “Arizona Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Act” — on May 3. It would have authorized up to 10% of the state’s treasury and retirement funds to be invested in Bitcoin and other digital assets.
According to data from bitcoinlaws.io, 26 US states have introduced strategic crypto reserve bills, with 18 of them currently active.
Hobbs also vetoed Senate Bill 1024, which would have permitted state agencies to accept cryptocurrency payments for taxes, fines and fees via approved service providers.
Although the proposal attempted to shield the state from direct exposure to price volatility, Hobbs said it still introduced “too much risk.”
Related: Taiwan lawmaker calls for Bitcoin reserve at national conference
Hobbs approves Bitcoin ATM bill
On May 12, Hobbs approved House Bill 2387, which introduces new consumer protection rules for cryptocurrency kiosk (ATM) operators, aiming to reduce fraud and improve transparency.
The bill mandates that kiosks display clear, multilingual warnings about common crypto scams and require users to acknowledge these risks before completing transactions. Operators must also provide detailed receipts that include transaction data, contact information, fees and refund policies.
Furthermore, the bill caps transactions at $2,000 per day for new customers and $10,500 per day for returning users after 10 days. Kiosk providers must also offer 24/7 toll-free customer service and post the number visibly on each machine.
Under the bill, if a new user is tricked into sending crypto under false pretenses and reports it with proof within 30 days, they are entitled to a full refund, including fees.
According to CoinATMRadar, there are currently 20 active Bitcoin ATMs in Arizona.
Notably, Hobbs has not entirely closed the door on digital assets. On Wednesday, she signed House Bill 2749, which updates Arizona’s unclaimed property laws to include digital assets.
The legislation allows the state to retain unclaimed cryptocurrencies in their original form rather than liquidating them into fiat currency.
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