Angela Rayner: ‘Normally I say, “play the ball not the man”. But Boris was literally the ball and the man’

When Angela Rayner went to see The Marriage of Figaro at the Glyndebourne festival in June — as a guest of a violinist from her home town of Stockport — Labour’s deputy leader was not seeking attention. But her first ever trip to the opera was gleefully picked up by rightwing newspapers and then seized on in parliament by Dominic Raab, then the Conservative deputy prime minister.

“She talks about working people . . . she was at the Glyndebourne music festival sipping champagne, listening to opera,” Raab told the House of Commons. “Champagne socialism is back in the Labour party.”

Raab’s comments created a storm. The former head of the English National Opera called them “sad and embarrassing”, while Rayner told Raab to cut out the snobbery: “The Marriage of Figaro is the story of a working-class woman who gets the better of a privileged but dim-witted villain.” 

The set-to “sparked off a whole national debate, which was really good,” says Rayner as we settle into our seats at the Royal Opera House’s Piazza restaurant. (It was irresistible to invite her to lunch there to gently épater les bourgeois.) “Because lots of people who worked in opera said, ‘I’m working-class — are you saying it’s not for me?’”

The 42-year-old Mancunian, who grew up on a council estate and became a mother at 16, is a rarity in a House of Commons crammed with white-collar graduates. She is also a rare authentic voice of old-fashioned union-backing socialism in the shadow cabinet of Keir Starmer, the technocratic party leader who has taken Labour to the right over the last two years.

We meet as Britain’s main opposition party finds itself in a position unimaginable just a few months ago. This year’s political chaos has left Labour with leads of 20 points or more over the ruling Conservatives in the opinion polls, implying a first election victory since 2005 that would propel Rayner to the post of deputy prime minister by 2024.

I survived [adversity] and came out better — but part of me wonders, when do I dip? When do I lose?’

But there remains a nagging sense that the party — despite leaving behind the hard-left years of former leader Jeremy Corbyn — lacks a clearly defined vision for the future beyond “fairness” and a greener economy. Labour endured a catastrophic collapse in support in the last general election in 2019 in “Red Wall” seats in its former heartlands of northern England and the Midlands, driven largely by frustration that the party was blocking Brexit.

Rayner says the party leadership is aware that it needs to build back trust with the electorate. “We’ve changed. People are willing to listen. But the idea that people are running out of their doors saying, ‘yay, Labour’ is not where they are. They don’t want us to get ahead of ourselves.”

When it comes to Labour’s internecine battles she is something of a shape-shifter, acting more on her instincts than on rigid political philosophy. On Brexit, the most contentious issue of her generation, she says: “I didn’t have a particularly strong view either way.”

But for all her caution here, when it comes to the election trail the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne near Manchester is an outspoken campaigner. A proud socialist, she got into trouble with the party leadership last year for calling the Tories a “bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute vile”.

“Underestimate me at your peril,” she tells me.

We peruse the set menu at Piazza, which looks down on Covent Garden from the fifth floor of the Royal Opera House. With hardly anyone else in the restaurant — a bland, modern space — the food arrives swiftly. I’ve ordered a luminous pink beetroot hummus with fresh focaccia. “I get food envy,” Rayner warns.

Still, she enjoys her chicken liver parfait with caper raisin purée. “The texture is more moussey, it has a little chutney, which merges into one flavour, like baby food,” she deadpans. This doesn’t sound great. “Have you tried baby food? Some of it is really nice,” she replies.

We’ve eschewed champagne — on this occasion — and ordered a bottle of chilled Chablis. “I have a palate of Mancunian working-class roots,” she says. “I’m happy if it tastes all right and not too vinegary.” 

The Conservative-backing Daily Mail has opined that Rayner “deploys the hard-done-by Northern card far too often”, but her life story is striking by any standards.

Rayner was one of three children in a dysfunctional family living in poverty, with most meals cooked in a deep-fat fryer and weekly baths at her grandmother’s high-rise flat to save money. They could easily have been taken into care, she acknowledges. Rayner admits she felt “resentment” because she had to act in effect as a mother to her own mother, who had bipolar disorder.

“When I was young, we didn’t have books because my mother couldn’t read or write,” Rayner says. On one occasion, her illiterate mother sprayed shaving foam on their pudding, thinking it was whipped cream. She struggled at secondary school, played truant and ended up pregnant at 16.

Others told her she wouldn’t be able to look after her child and was “destined to be on benefits” for ever. Instead she trained in social care at Stockport College and got a council job as a care worker. From there she worked for the trade union Unison, which eventually persuaded her to get into politics, entering parliament in 2015. “I thought, OK I’ll give it a go. I didn’t really know what I was getting into,” she says.

Even then she faced further personal trials. Her second son, Charlie, was born just 23 weeks into her pregnancy and spent eight months in intensive care. “I was told he wouldn’t be able to sleep, eat for himself, look after himself, he’d need 24-hour care. The doctors said switch the machine off. But we didn’t and now he’s walking and talking and going to mainstream school,” she says proudly.

Charlie is registered blind and has just been diagnosed with epilepsy. “He’s got a long cane he won’t use . . . he wants to take risks and I want to wrap him in cotton wool.”

Rayner became a grandmother at 37. I ask if Rayner’s five-year-old granddaughter calls her “grandma”. “She’s non-verbal autistic so doesn’t really communicate, although she snuggles up to me.”

Her life sounds stressful but she thrives on adrenaline, saying that Covid lockdowns hit her hard when she suddenly went from “200 miles per hour to 10 miles per hour”. She calls herself an “eternal optimist” and believes adversity has made her stronger, but admits: “I survived it and came out better, but part of me wonders, when do I dip? When do I lose?”

Rayner’s emotional extroversion is in contrast with the more “methodical” approach of Starmer, the tightly controlled former director of public prosecutions who has sought to steer Labour back towards the centre ground. His number is logged in her phone under “Mr Darcy”, the uptight lawyer from the Bridget Jones books.

Rayner is sometimes compared to John Prescott, a northern former ship’s steward who was deputy prime minister under Tony Blair. It is a backhanded compliment, given that Prescott is famous for once punching a voter and taking a freestyle approach to the English language. But Rayner enjoys the comparison.

“They painted him as an old-fashioned trade union baron but he was loved by the public,” she argues. “I don’t think he was a token figure. He was right at Blair’s side whether Blair liked it or not, and he got what he wanted.”

I don’t fit into a box. I have strong views on security, which pitches me to the right of the party. But I have strong views on things like the economy’

If that sounds like a warning to Starmer, it probably is. Tensions between the pair exploded last year when she was blamed for Labour’s weak local election results. Starmer tried to demote her but — after a lively row — she emerged with even more titles. “There was a frank discussion but we got there. Sometimes it’s like a relationship where you have to have a big blowout and clear the air,” she says, freckled hands pressed against her cheeks.

Did she swear at him? “I don’t discuss mine and Keir’s private conversations . . . I think we rub along reasonably well,” she trails off. Does she swear, more generally? “Yeah, I can have a potty mouth, I think all northerners can . . . but I don’t swear to offend.”

The waiter returns with the main courses: “seven-hour lamb” with creamed potato for her and sea bass with risotto for me. Rayner approves. “It’s dead homely, the sort of stuff you’ll eat when you’re freezing cold on a Friday evening.” My fish is cooked to a perfect crisp and the lemony rice is speckled with dill.

Rayner’s confessional manner belies a rather less open approach to her politics, which is sinuous and undefined. On one hand, she is seen as a leftwinger, having served loyally under Corbyn. Her partner Sam Tarry is an MP who ran Corbyn’s leadership campaign in 2016. Yet she often defends the record of the centrist Blair in government. “I don’t fit into a box,” she says. “I have strong views on things like security, which pitches me to the right of the party. But I have very strong views on things like the economy.”

Despite her trade union roots, Rayner stayed quiet this summer after Tarry was sacked from his role as a shadow minister after attending a picket line. “The Tories wanted to always make it about ‘militant trade unions’ when it has been about a militant government,” she says. “It’s about not falling into these silly little arguments of one against the other.”

How does she feel about the exodus of thousands of leftwing members who were expelled? “The party doesn’t belong to one particular individual,” she replies — and quickly changes the subject to wax lyrical about her mash and gravy. “All northerners need to come here,” she says. “Look at the lack of green on this plate. Perfect.”

Rayner is recognised everywhere she goes, although she says “the celebrity stuff just feels a bit cringe”. There are parallels, I suggest, with Boris Johnson, the former Tory prime minister: they share unconventional childhoods, charismatic personalities and complicated private lives.

Rayner doesn’t entirely dismiss the comparison but she can’t stand Johnson. “Normally I say, ‘play the ball not the man’. But Boris was literally the ball and the man . . . his lack of morality and ethics came through and bled into government.”

Labour politicians claim to want an early general election but that is widely seen in Westminster as public posturing. Any new government would inherit an economic scorched earth, with spiralling inflation, rising mortgage rates, an energy crisis, cuts to public spending and expectations of the longest recession for a century.

Rayner’s party is trying to make the Conservatives take the blame. But hasn’t this been driven in part by global factors? “Yes, but that’s what made Liz Truss’s behaviour even more reckless,” she says, sipping the deliciously flinty Chablis. “It’s like the Titanic, except that they created the iceberg and steered the ship into it. Truss economics went against everything that the market would consider to be sound economics.”

I ask if she feels sorry for Truss. “No, not when I know my mortgage interest rate is going to go up in June from 1.44 per cent to triple that — if I’m lucky — on a £320,000 mortgage,” she says. “I’m going to get absolutely pelted, and most people feel that way.” 

Voters in focus groups often say they don’t know what Starmer’s Labour party stands for. As a result, its leadership is always under pressure to spell out in greater detail what it would do in government.

In reality, Labour has made dozens of policy announcements in the past two years, just without any great traction with the public at a time of Covid, the cost of living crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On Rayner’s beat alone — she is responsible for “the future of work” — the party has promised a right to flexible working, a ban on zero-hours contracts, a rise in statutory sick pay and mandatory ethnicity pay-gap reporting.

But what would be the biggest priorities for an incoming Starmer government? Labour would borrow an extra £28bn a year for capital investment, Rayner points out. Elsewhere there will be fiscal restraint. Would a Labour government succumb to union pressure to give public sector workers inflation-matching pay rises of 10 per cent? “Brutally, no. But we would strengthen the unions and have good employment rights.”

Rayner says Labour would also make the tax system fairer by hitting landlords and speculators. Personally, she can see the case for nationalising the National Grid, which is not official Labour policy. But she questions the wisdom of spending billions taking over other industries such as water with money that could be spent on other priorities. “It’s not the most important thing to nationalise everything.”

We break off for a second to order a raspberry tart for me and “dark chocolate, calvados and pears” for her. “That looks like it’s got heart attack written all over it,” she says approvingly as the pudding arrives.

Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister, is a more challenging proposition than his predecessor. Rayner believes Sunak “does have ethics and values” — in contrast to Johnson — but says he will struggle to connect with ordinary people during a cost of living crisis.

“I’m not going to diss him because he’s very wealthy, I think that’s perfectly fine,” she argues. “What I do have a problem with is hypocrisy. When you’ve got a prime minister whose wife had non-dom status to save X amount of millions on their wealth — at a time where others are suffering — that’s going to be a problem,” she says. Sunak’s wife, previously a non-dom, last year offered to start paying UK tax on all her worldwide earnings.

As I polish off the last of the delicious raspberry tart, the conversation shifts to exercise and Rayner’s dislike of jogging. She starts reminiscing about the £5,600 she borrowed from a bank for cosmetic surgery 12 years ago.

“I had my boob job on my 30th birthday, I’d lost six stone thanks to my personal trainer, but my boobs just looked like two boiled eggs in socks,” she says. “You know, like basset hound ears. You can’t be 30 and have a chest like an 84-year-old granny. I had spent about 14 months losing my baby weight, I was 17 stone after I had my children.”

The bill has arrived and it seems strangely low until I notice that we haven’t been charged for the Chablis. “It’s on the house,” the waiter says.

We descend the escalator and wander out into the windy, rainy street. Rayner stops to vape among the puddles before we part company. The conversation turns serious again, this time about the need for the west to stand firm against Russia in Ukraine. But she can’t resist a final quip about the gratis bottle of wine: “Did he think I was Jay Rayner?”

Jim Pickard is the FT’s chief political correspondent

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