Thread by @thetimes

Her mother was bipolar, her father abusive. She grew up in poverty and had a child aged 15. Now she’s Labour’s outspoken deputy leader. Angela Rayner on the legacy of her traumatic childhood – and why so many politicians are in the wrong job thetimes.co.uk/article/angela…

Angela Rayner is one of the most powerful women at Westminster, the deputy leader of the Labour Party and a politician who has been elected three times to Parliament by her constituents in Ashton-under-Lyne

Yet, for all that, she still thinks “I can’t be loved”

“I never have been, so I find it difficult…feeling nurtured and happy. I’m never content. I never look at things and think, ‘Wow, look at what you’ve achieved.’"

"I think, ‘What haven’t you done?’” She tells The Times

Labour’s deputy leader has had an extraordinarily tough life

Her aforementioned childhood means she’s “thrived” under the chaos of the last five years, partly because “The trauma, the screaming, the unpredictability” is her “bread and butter” – what she’s “used to”

Having gotten pregnant at 15 and left school with no qualifications at 16, she says she still feels like an imposter at Westminster, even after six years in the chamber

She thinks that having struggled in her early life makes her stronger and a better politician

There is a ruthlessness and a willingness to take risks that comes from having nothing to lose

Her family were desperately poor

“We never had a Sunday roast. I used to go out to my mates’ houses and say, ‘Will your parents let me in for Sunday dinner?’ Birds Eye beef and gravy, boil in a bag, with Smash, was the closest we got.”

Her and her siblings had baths once a week, on Sundays, when they visited their grandmother. Rayner’s “nan” bought her a pair of black steel-capped shoes because “they’d last longer”, which only attracted more teasing

My mum said, ‘I could only love one person at a time and that was your dad.’ She couldn’t emotionally connect to us.” The bipolar disorder made her mother terrifyingly unstable

Notably, Rayner sees similarities between herself and Boris Johnson, who also suffered emotional deprivation as a child and whose late mother too suffered from mental health problems

“There are some issues that are not class-based” she remarks

Labour’s deputy leader also looks like a stark contrast to Keir Starmer, the north London lawyer who is never out of a suit and tie

"He didn’t grow up in an affluent background” she notes, but admits he looks posh now. “I think he had it beaten out of him by the system”

Some MPs have accused Rayner (or her allies) of plotting against the Starmer, but she insists he is the “right person” to win back voters in the so-called northern “red wall”

Starmer is a feminist, she says

In a conversation after he was elected leader, and as Covid was ripping through Westminster, he discussed putting in place systems for her to take over if he got ill

“He respected my role. He didn’t see me as a woman.”

Rayner is asked about Rosie Duffield, who is avoiding Labour's conference having suffered death threats over her stance on trans rights

Last year she suggested Duffield should “reflect” on her comments and realise that they could be “hurtful”

Rayner hasn’t changed her view

She reiterates the line that “The Labour Party is absolutely committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people and upholding the Equality Act.”

But she says she is “appalled” by the threats

When Keir Starmer tried to move his deputy to a more junior role earlier this year, she refused. “I hold my ground about everything,” she says. “It wasn’t about Keir; it’s just how I am. This is why I was never considered a Corbynista”

“When I first came into parliament, I thought: ‘I’m nowhere near as good as all these people that have got big brains and have been to private school.’"

"Now I look and think, ‘Oh my God, step aside, because you have not got a clue'”
thetimes.co.uk/article/angela…