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”.
The TON Foundation could have avoided its golden visa controversy in the UAE with a brief legal review, a local lawyer told Cointelegraph.
Politics
Norman Tebbit: Former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government dies aged 94
Norman Tebbit, the former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government, has died at the age of 94.
Lord Tebbit died “peacefully at home” late on Monday night, his son William confirmed.
One of Mrs Thatcher’s most loyal cabinet ministers, he was a leading political voice throughout the turbulent 1980s.
He held the posts of employment secretary, trade secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Conservative party chairman before resigning as an MP in 1992 after his wife was left disabled by the Provisional IRA’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
He considered standing for the Conservative leadership after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation in 1990, but was committed to taking care of his wife.
Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit in 1987 after her election victory. Pic: PA
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called him an “icon” in British politics and was “one of the leading exponents of the philosophy we now know as Thatcherism”.
“But to many of us it was the stoicism and courage he showed in the face of terrorism, which inspired us as he rebuilt his political career after suffering terrible injuries in the Brighton bomb, and cared selflessly for his wife Margaret, who was gravely disabled in the bombing,” she wrote on X.
“He never buckled under pressure and he never compromised. Our nation has lost one of its very best today and I speak for all the Conservative family and beyond in recognising Lord Tebbit’s enormous intellect and profound sense of duty to his country.
“May he rest in peace.”
Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret stand outside the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Pic: PA
Tory grandee David Davis told Sky News Lord Tebbit was a “great working class Tory, always ready to challenge establishment conventional wisdom for the bogus nonsense it often was”.
“He was one of Thatcher’s bravest and strongest lieutenants, and a great friend,” Sir David said.
“He had to deal with the agony that the IRA visited on him and his wife, and he did so with characteristic unflinching courage. He was a great man.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage said Lord Tebbit “gave me a lot of help in my early days as an MEP”.
He was “a great man. RIP,” he added.
Lord Tebbit as employment secretary in 1983 with Mrs Thatcher. Pic: PA
Born to working-class parents in north London, he was made a life peer in 1992, where he sat until he retired in 2022.
Lord Tebbit was trade secretary when he was injured in the Provisional IRA’s bombing in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference in 1984.
Five people died in the attack and Lord Tebbit’s wife, Margaret, was left paralysed from the neck down. She died in 2020 at the age of 86.
Before entering politics, his first job, aged 16, was at the Financial Times where he had his first experience of trade unions and vowed to “break the power of the closed shop”.
He then trained as a pilot with the RAF – at one point narrowly escaping from the burning cockpit of a Meteor 8 jet – before becoming the MP for Epping in 1970 then for Chingford in 1974.
Lord Tebbit during an EU debate in the House of Lords in 1997. Pic: PA
As a cabinet minister, he was responsible for legislation that weakened the powers of the trade unions and the closed shop, making him the political embodiment of the Thatcherite ideology that was in full swing.
His tough approach was put to the test when riots erupted in Brixton, south London, against the backdrop of high rates of unemployment and mistrust between the black community and the police.
He was frequently misquoted as having told the unemployed to “get on your bike”, and was often referred to as “Onyerbike” for some time afterwards.
What he actually said was he grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father who did not riot, “he got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it”.
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