She became one of the most powerful women in the UK, following Labour’s victory in the British general election. Yet nothing predestined Angela Rayner to become number two in the government: she left school as a teenager, without a diploma.
She left school without a degree and became a single mother at the age of 16
Angela Rayner is appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Housing and Territorial Rebalance. In a country where Britain’s ruling class is overwhelmingly educated at Oxford and Cambridge universities, this 44-year-old is an outlier.
She grew up in Stockport, in the north of England, in social housing. From an early age, she looked after her illiterate, bipolar mother, who never worked. Her father was mostly absent. In her childhood, a hot bath was only on Sundays, at her grandmother’s house. And to get full meals, she made sure she was invited to friends’ houses.
“Angie”, as many call her, left school without a diploma and found herself a single mother at 16. A few years later, she had another child, a very large premature baby, who is almost blind.
“I have a PhD in real life”
“I have a PhD in real life,” she sums up. “These challenges haven’t broken me. I know what my strengths are.”
Angela Rayner is instantly recognizable, with her long red hair and bangs, which have become her trademark, as well as her popular northern English accent. There’s also her determined gait, as if nothing could stop her.
Since 2020, she has held second place in the Labour Party leadership. Labour’s victory in the general election propelled her to number two in the government led by Keir Starmer, in relation to which she is much further to the left.
8000 kilomรจtres parcourus ร travers le Royaume-Uni
Durant la campagne, elle dit avoir parcouru plus de 8.000 kilomรจtres ร travers le Royaume-Uni ร bord du car rouge du Labour. “Vous allez adorer ! Il y a un rรฉfrigรฉrateur”, lance-t-elle dans les premiers jours. “Tournons la page (des conservateurs, ndlr) et reconstruisons la Grande-Bretagne”, martรจle Angela Rayner aux quatre coins du pays.
“Rรฉparer des voitures”, La politique, pourtant, elle n’en avait jamais rรชvรฉ. “Mon seul rรชve quand j’รฉtais ado รฉtait d’apprendre ร conduire lรฉgalement”, raconte-t-elle au podcast The Rest is Politics. Avant d’ajouter : “Je sais rรฉparer les voitures, vous savez”.ย
Aprรจs avoir abandonnรฉ l’รฉcole, elle travaille dans le social. C’est lร qu’elle dรฉcouvre le syndicalisme, puis la politique.ย
A meteoric rise thanks to her outspokenness
In 2015, she was elected MP for the constituency of Ashton-under-Lyne, near Manchester. On the Labour benches, she enjoyed a meteoric rise thanks to her outspokenness, first under Jeremy Corbyn, the very left-wing leader of the party until 2020, then under Keir Starmer.
She knows that she stands in stark contrast to the latter, a former lawyer often considered uncharismatic. “We kind of complement each other,” she tells the Guardian. “He softens my rough side. I bring him out of his shell.
For this left-leaning newspaper, Angela Rayner “is brusque, surly and terrifies the Conservatives”. “They don’t know how to interact (with me) because they don’t often meet people like me”, she believes.
Misogynistic attacks
In 2020, a tabloid wrote that Conservative MPs compared Angela Rayner to Sharon Stone in the film “Basic Instinct”, claiming that she liked to distract the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson by crossing and uncrossing her legs during questions to the head of government in Parliament. These misogynistic attacks caused a scandal.
Recently, Conservatives have brought Angela Rayner’s past to the surface, accusing her of breaching electoral law in connection with the sale of a home in 2015. But the police, after “a thorough investigation”, decided not to press charges.
Angela Rayner can now turn her attention to her priorities in government. She promises to put an end to “zero hours contracts”, which guarantee no minimum number of paid working hours, to restore the power of trade unions and to build 1.5 million homes within five years. She wants new social housing that would be “pretty, green” and in which people would “want to live”.
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