The Cinderella MP

 

Angela Rayner - Labour Party Deputy Leader

I recently read a Guardian interview with the 'soft left' Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner (41) the Member of Parliament for the Lancashire town of Ashton-under-Lyne.  In September 2014, Rayner was selected as the Labour candidate for Ashton-under-Lyne on the retirement of David Heyes. The former care worker, had been employed by Stockport Council and was later  elected a full-time Unison Branch Secretary with Unison and joined the Labour Party. 

Although Rayner likes to claim that she has pulled herself up by her own boot straps, she  benefitted from an affirmative action policy in 2014, which saw her put on an all-women short list for the Parliamentary seat of Ashton-under-Lyne. She won the seat at the 2015 General Election, and became the first women to represent the constituency in its 180-year history. 

Originally from Stockport, Rayner is proud of her achievements. At 16 years-old, she was single mother living on Council estate "only able to afford clothes from a charity shop" and "didn't know what a trade union was." She grew up in poverty, left school with no qualifications, and her mother was an illiterate woman who struggled with mental health issues. But since becoming an MP, you might say that Angela has landed on her feet. In 2015,  the media reported that she's used House of Commons notepaper to berate an hapless shopkeeper after making a complaint that she'd been unable to obtain a coveted pair of 'Star War Shoes' with R2-D2 heels for £195.

A big problem that Rayner seems afflicted with, is that she can't stop bragging about her impoverished background. The problem is almost pathological in its proportions. One might say that there is something of the Cinderella about her. A young women raised in  deprived circumstances whose life suddenly changes to remarkable fortune after a period of obscurity and neglect. It's the kind of rags to riches story that we all like to read about.  In an interview in 2012, before she became an MP, she told the Guardian:

"I grew up on a council estate and was pregnant at 16, only able to afford clothes from a charity shop. I was told I'd never amount to anything and would be living in a council house, on benefits with loads of kids by the time I was 30."

Some folk think that Rayner's self-mythology is becoming rather boring and might be alienating the working-class Labour vote. In May, the Guardian columnist, Barbara Ellen, expressed the view that Rayner rested on her working-class laurels rather too much by relentlessly pushing her back story and her impeccable council house credentials. She commented: "The only people who are reliably underwhelmed by a 'working-class' origin story are working-class people'.

Labour's membership has fallen since Keir Starmer (Steer Calmer) became leader, and due to its shattered finances, the party are laying off 96 staff via voluntary redundancy. Last year, Unite the union, cut funding to Labour over frustrations with Sir Keir Starmer's leadership.

Although Angela Rayner is promoting Labour's flexible working that would supposedly fit around people's daily lives, she recently evaded answering the question as to whether Labour if elected, would scrap zero-hour contracts. This interview took place on Radio 4 on the same day (28 July), when Rayner had tweeted that Labour would ban zero-hour contracts. This sort of behaviour has led some to consider Rayner untrustworthy and slippery. Moreover, some at the top of the Labour party are said to see her as a "working-class oik and a bit thick." Despite her working-class and trade union credentials, she abstained on a government welfare bill in 2015, that led to cuts of £12bn in social security spending which included cutting child tax credits to hard working families.

If one was to compare Rayner to a Dickens' character it would have to be to that humble soul Uriah Heep. Behind Heep's facade of humility, there lay a greedy, ambitious, and manipulative man. But those traits could be applied to almost all politicians.