There’s this awful woman – you might know her. She’s really common, very strong northern accent. Grew up in some dump called Stockport. She vapes while she’s exercising, she flashes her knickers at male colleagues, she’s tattooed, she wears Doc Martens at work, she had a thing with a married man, bought her own former council house that she’s no right to own. She became a grandmother at 37, people! Everyone decent is shocked and appalled by her.
The only thing is, nobody can tell her where to go, because of quotas, diversity, equal opportunities rubbish. Oh, and she’s been known to drink whisky with the King, has a grace-and-favour pied-a-terre in central London, if you please, and she’s currently second in command behind the prime minister.
Step forth, Angela Rayner, who right now is the most slagged-off woman in Britain.
This weekend, spurred on by the right-wing press, she took a battering from the angrier corners of Facebook – the ones with flags for avatars, mostly. Angela’s great, unforgivable crime? The purchase of a seafront property on the south coast – in Hove, actually – for a reputed £800,000. Hence the current tabloid sobriquet “Three Pads” Rayner.
Given that chancellor Rachel Reeves is threatening to impose a supertax on second homes in the autumn Budget, this has commentators in a ferment of teeth-gnashing rage – despite there being no suggestion that Rayner will escape the levy.
Her holiday home has also triggered some truly desperate headlines. “Three Pads” is less a witty pun, more a gynae problem. And, of course, Rayner does not “own three homes”, nor does she puppet-master a cynically acquired “property empire” from her golden throne, while stroking a snowy Persian cat.
In truth, Rayner has the use of a small flat in Admiralty House, in Whitehall, which has been used by every deputy PM before her, where she can stay over after late voting sessions. She has a modest constituency house in Ashton-under-Lyne, which she has represented since 2015. Having failed to bag herself an official country residence when Labour came to power – foreign secretary David Lammy got Chevening in Kent, Rachel Reeves got the keys to Dorneywood in Buckinghamshire – she’s gone and bought her own weekend retreat. Evil!
Ever since she was elected to the Labour deputy leadership, Rayner has faced every accusation imaginable short of armed robbery.
When she stood in for Keir Starmer in the Commons, she was accused of “doing a Sharon Stone” – uncrossing her legs provocatively – to distract then prime minister Boris Johnson. If she wears a skirt, she’s using her sexuality to get ahead. If she wears a trouser suit, it’s “baggy” and “unflattering”. If she speaks, she’s common as muck; if she doesn’t, she’s “tight-lipped”.
If she dances on holiday, she’s “partying while Britain collapses”. (Last summer, a viral video showed her dancing behind a DJ deck in Ibiza, belting out Gotye’s hit song Somebody That I Used to Know – and, lo, the nickname “Angela Raver” was born.) And if she sucks on a vape in an inflatable canoe off Brighton Beach, as she did this weekend, the image triggers a thousand cruel memes.
And yet the outrage over Rayner is nothing to do with her “hypocrisy”. It’s because a successful, attractive woman from a comprehensive school near Manchester, who doesn’t talk as if she’s swallowed all the plums in the icebox or dress like a Home Counties wife, has dared to raise her head above the political parapet. She is a threat to everyone who believes that politics is a big boys’ game, or that only those who went to Oxbridge deserve a say in the running of the country. It’s classist, sexist, ad hominem and profoundly unfair.
Don’t agree? Here’s a little quiz to see if you’re assessing Angela Rayner politically or personally: Did you ever hold a well-spoken male Tory cabinet minister to the same exacting standards? No, I thought as much.
