“I’ve never been called a coward in my life,” Labour MP Angela Rayner told British voters at one election. TV debates she said last month as she laid out her policy priorities.
Labour deputy leader Rayner, 44, will become one of the most powerful women in British politics when her party forms a new government on Friday, ending 14 years of Conservative rule.
Ms Rayner is an outspoken MP who is passionate, direct and sometimes brutally honest and is considered one of Labor’s strongest electoral assets in winning over ordinary voters.
Political analysts say she appeals to parts of the public that new Prime Minister Keir Starmer may have trouble attracting.
“She can speak to a wide range of voters, including working-class voters who might not agree with Starmer’s plans,” said Dr Liz Butler, a lecturer in modern history at City University London. “I do think her gender is important. She is attractive. She speaks clearly and can be very frank at times.”
On Friday, Ms Rayner was named deputy prime minister and minister for housing and community improvement, both key posts in the new government.
In her victory speech in the early hours of Friday morning after winning her seat in Ashton-under-Lyne, near Manchester, she paid tribute to the “working class people who are the bedrock of this country”. “There has been no greater privilege than to serve you,” she said.
While Britain’s top political jobs have traditionally been held by the country’s elite, with many of those in power attending the same private schools and universities, Ms Rayner took a less traditional route to the top.
She dropped out of school at 16 because she became pregnant, and later began caring for the elderly and became a union representative in her workplace.
She entered politics through the trade union movement, rising through the ranks before being elected as the first female MP for her constituency.
She held key political posts under former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and was often associated with the left wing of the party. In 2020, she was elected deputy leader of the party and, despite some initial tensions with Mr Starmer, she thrived in a reshaped, more centre-left Labour party.
“She has been very careful to build bridges between the different factions of the party,” Ms Butler said. “I think she’s the rare example of someone who can win the heart of both a Corbyn leadership and a Starmer leadership.”
But political opponents and tabloids often target her, which Sarah Childs, professor of politics and gender at the University of Edinburgh, said must have something to do with her rising political career.
“The fact that she was unrepentant, sometimes quite strident, and that her behavior was not always consistent with how some people wanted women to behave in public life,” Ms. Childs said. And that “created an environment where people who wanted to be critical could see that particular way of behaving as a problem.”
In 2022, a British tabloid published a story based on a claim by an unnamed Conservative MP that Ms. Rayner Trying to distract Prime Minister Boris Johnson In Parliament, she described her misogyny by repositioning her legs and comparing her to Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. The post drew strong criticism from other MPs in Parliament, with one saying: “This story shows that misogyny is still alive and well and lurking in the corridors of the House of Commons.”
Ms Rayner’s thick northern accent, a clear reflection of her upbringing in Stockport, has been mocked by some anti-Labour critics on social media, but it is a point of pride for her.
“I speak the same way as people where I grew up,” Ms. Renner Last year, on social media platform X,“I want people who come from my background, who were told to ‘know their place,’ to know that public life is their place, too.”
