Labour’s working-class warrior who fell from power | UK News

Until this week, Angela Rayner was considered to be one of the most powerful women in Britain, a deputy prime minister who was widely tipped to be a future candidate for the top job in politics.

A self-described “proper working-class” woman, Rayner grew up in poverty and left school without any qualifications at 16.

She became the first female MP for the Greater Manchester seat of Ashton-under-Lyne in 2015, before entering high office in the wake of last year’s landslide election victory

It was a remarkable journey.

But Rayner’s extraordinary rise to the apex of British politics with the Labour Party has culminated in an equally spectacular fall.

The 45-year-old resigned as deputy prime minister and housing secretary after admitting she did not pay enough tax on the purchase of a new home.

She has also stepped down as deputy leader of the Labour Party.

It means a return to the backbenches for a high-profile MP who was considered to be a big political asset to her party and who remains a popular figure within many Labour circles and beyond.

Her against-the-odds story, personality, and ability to connect with parts of the electorate that might be less accessible to others, gave her a special status in Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet and underscores why she will be so hard to replace.

Born Angela Bowen in Stockport, Greater Manchester, in 1980, Rayner grew up on one of the area’s poorest council estates and from an early age, was caring for her mother, who had bipolar disorder and suffered from depression.

Both Rayner’s parents were unemployed and speaking in 2017, she remembered having to grow up very quickly.

“My mum was a really vulnerable person. I remember, at 10, my mum being suicidal and me sleeping like a dog on the end of her bed, just to try and stay next to her so she didn’t do any harm to herself,” Rayner said.

She has also recalled going to her grandmother’s flat on Sundays, so the family could take it in turns to have a bath there. Hot water was too expensive for them to use at home.

Rayner has often spoken about being told she would “never amount to anything”, after she left school without any qualifications.

But after having her first child at 16, Rayner studied part-time at college, learning British sign language and gaining a vocational qualification in social care.

She spent a number of years as a care worker in Stockport, mainly looking after elderly people in their own homes, while also rising quickly through the ranks of the union, Unison.

She has described herself as “mouthy”, someone who would “take no messing from management”.

In her 20s, she became a full-time union official and eventually, after battles over working conditions and zero-hour contracts, rose to the most senior elected role in Unison in north-west England.

It was at Unison she met Mark Rayner, a fellow union official whom she married in 2010 and divorced in 2023. The couple went on to have two sons, one of whom was born so prematurely he is registered blind and has special educational needs.

At the age of 37, the mum-of-three became a grandmother, sparking the nickname “Grangela”.

She credits the trade union movement with encouraging her to enter politics and taking her from – in her own words – “the girl on a council estate” to “a woman who feels like she can conquer the world”.

Those ambitions started to be realised in 2015, when she was elected as the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne – a seat not far from her hometown. She later said she had only stood to make the point that “people like me can’t get elected” and had “accidentally” won the seat.

Rayner rose quickly in Westminster, taking up the women and equalities, and education briefs in the shadow cabinet of former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

When Corbyn stood down in 2020, following Labour’s worst general election result since 1935, Rayner did not run for the leadership, and backed her ally Rebecca Long-Bailey, who came second to Sir Keir.

Instead, Rayner stood for the deputy leadership and won election to that post comfortably – going on to be a central figure in Sir Keir’s bid to remake the party.

But relations between Sir Keir and Rayner have sometimes been tense. After Labour lost control of eight English councils and lost the seat of Hartlepool in a parliamentary by-election in May 2021, the deputy leader was removed from her post as party chairwoman.

She pushed back and was appointed shadow first secretary of state among other titles.

By that point, Rayner had a strong support base and a powerful role likened to that of John Prescott, who was seen as a political bridge between the working class and the New Labour project during Tony Blair’s premiership.

Rayner heavily leaned into that role and tried to use it to her party’s advantage in the years before Labour’s general election win in 2024.

Outspoken and combative at times, Rayner repeatedly accused the Conservatives of being “out of touch”, and hammered the party with lines such as “one rule for them and another rule for us” during the scandal over pandemic parties in Downing Street.

Sometimes Rayner admitted she had gone too far, once apologising for describing senior Conservatives as “a bunch of scum”.

Her prominence and the venom of her political attacks had put a target on her back and attracted unwanted headlines.

In 2021, Rayner lashed out at “sexism and misogyny” in politics, after a newspaper reported that she crossed and uncrossed her legs during prime minister’s questions to distract Boris Johnson.

And in 2024, she was investigated by the police over the tax paid on the sale of her council house, again following a slew of reports by unfriendly newspapers, cheered on by the Conservatives. She was not found to have committed a criminal offence.

Her tendency to brush through political controversies gave her an air of untouchability, with some dubbing her “Teflon Ang”.

Her stock had risen further still as deputy prime minister, leading on one of Labour’s key pledges to build 1.5 million homes by 2030, and helping Sir Keir quell a rebellion by Labour MPs over welfare cuts.

But the political optics of a housing secretary admitting she had not paid enough tax on her home were not easy on the eye.

Rayner faced charges of hypocrisy and calls for her to stand down.

She resigned from government after the prime minister’s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus declared that she had breached the ministerial code.

While he said that Rayner had “acted with integrity”, he told the prime minister that “she cannot be considered to have met the ‘highest possible standards of proper conduct’ as envisaged by the [ministerial] code.”

In her resignation letter, Rayner said she deeply regretted her decision not to seek additional specialist tax advice when buying a flat in Hove, East Sussex.

In his handwritten response, the prime minister said he had “huge respect” for her achievements in politics, describing her as “the living embodiment of social mobility”.

Losing a key figure blows a massive hole in Sir Keir’s plan to relaunch the government after a difficult first 14 months in office.

It also marks the downfall of the career of one of Labour’s brightest stars.

Having overcome a difficult upbringing and personal adversity to climb the heights of the Labour Party and become only its second ever deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner’s political career has come to a premature end.