If the polls are correct, it’s a matter of weeks before Angela Rayner becomes the most powerful woman in Britain. As Labour’s deputy leader, the 4 July vote will determine whether her nine years of service as an MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, in Greater Manchester, culminates in her becoming the second-ever female deputy Prime Minister. Currently, the BBC's election polls forecast Labour having a landslide victory with 44% of the vote, the Conservatives trailing behind at 24% while Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist party Reform UK sits at 12%.
Rayner is more than ready for the challenge – but she does have fears as election day creeps closer. ‘The thing that scares me is that people will think, “Well, I don't need to vote” but if people want that change, they have to vote or it won't happen,’ she says. ‘Who knows where the country will be with five more years of the Tories? I’ve seen how they have run the country up close, and I know that the working-class girl from a council estate can do so much better. I used to have impostor syndrome seeing that up close, how they disregarded and disrespected the people's votes and people's trust. I know we can do better than that and I'm up for that challenge.’
Currently touring the country on her big red ‘battle bus’, Rayner has dealt with a turbulent run-up to the election. In March, former Tory deputy chairman, Michael Ashcroft, alleged in his unauthorised biography of Rayner that she had misled tax officials in the sale of her former council house. James Daly, Conservative MP for Bury North, also alleged Rayner had broken electoral law by wrongly declaring where she was living on the electoral register. After investigations by the Metropolitan Police and HMRC, Rayner was cleared of any wrongdoing. However, she lost over a month of crucial campaigning time, due to what Labour leader Keir Starmer dubbed a Tory ‘smear campaign’ against her.
Rayner was always confident she’d be cleared, she says, but nonetheless found the whole ordeal frustrating. ‘It was difficult at times because the Tories put the focus on me knowing full well it was a smear,’ she says. ‘It shows you that after 14 years of being in government they’ve got nothing to say. They’ve got no record to stand on because they’ve crashed the economy, sent people’s bills sky high whether that’s their mortgage, rent, cost of food or energy.’
Tabloid headlines about Rayner during the investigation where predictably sensational, but some crossed the line by publishing her son’s birth certificate (attempting to prove she had lied about where she was living). The intrusion was ‘totally unacceptable’, Rayner says, but it’s also not her first rodeo either. Since becoming an MP in 2015, she’s faced a slew of sexist and classist headlines.
‘There’s women up and down the country every single day that face classism, discrimination, misogyny, and actually one of the things I've tried to do is hold a mirror up to that,’ Rayner says. ‘But when people in the media have been misogynistic towards me, the public have overwhelmingly seen it and hit back against it.’
Women have so many more barriers.
It's part of the reason why she’s a staunch defender of Diane Abbott. The MP had her whip suspended in April 2023 over comments Abbott made to The Observer saying that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people are not subject to the same racism as other minorities. Abbot withdrew her remarks and apologised, and received a formal warning from Labour. Abbot’s whip was restored in May, and she is standing for Labour in her constituency of Hackney and Stoke Newington. The online furore – and abuse – Abbott faced raised questions about whether female politicians are held to higher standards than their male counterparts.
‘Women have so many more barriers,’ Rayner agrees. ‘Diane Abbott has been a member of parliament for 37 years and was the first Black female MP. Can you imagine walking into parliament on that day, and nobody looks like her at all? She has trailblazed and we've got so many more MPs in parliament now because Diane has showed them that they can make it and that their face fitted. I have a huge amount of respect for Diane.’
The female vote is a major target for Labour in the run up to the election. When Grazia polled our readers almost 25% were undecided. So, what is Rayner promising to win them over?
‘Our number one mission is to secure and grow the economy to pay for our public services,’ she says. ‘Then get our public services back on track. Getting NHS and dentistry operations and appointments is so difficult at the moment. [Also] getting qualified teachers in schools so our kids have decent opportunity and secure work so that people can have a good job that they can build their lives on. Great British Energy is an opportunity for the next generation of skilled work. We've got an exciting programme that's looking ahead.’
Crucially, Labour also want to fix the disparities between women’s healthcare within the NHS. When it comes to Grazia’s campaigns to make childcare affordable and improve maternal care around mental health, Rayner is all for them. ‘Bridget, our shadow education secretary, has commissioned work to make sure that we can have a proper childcare policy that is affordable and available,’ she explains. ‘We announced free breakfast clubs, to make sure we help working families who are really struggling with the cost of childcare, but also the availability of it… We won’t over promise like the Tories have because they promised that they would implement a childcare scheme, and many working families were relying on that, and they've been let down.’
Rayner recently addressed how Labour would deal with the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, saying she would resign as an MP tomorrow if it were to bring about a ceasefire. ‘The situation in Gaza and Rafah is absolutely horrendous, thousands of civilians have lost their lives,’ she says. ‘The attack on 7 October was barbaric, people were at concert and murdered and gunned down while they were just out socialising. So, we desperately need a ceasefire in the area. There is a humanitarian crisis, we've got to get aid in and we've been pushing that really hard. To be fair, I'm not going to play politics with this, every single MP wants to see a ceasefire regardless of their political background. And the international community have been calling for one and we'll continue to do that, but from the Labour perspective, longer term, we have to have a two-state solution where we have a safe and secure Israel and a recognised state of Palestine.’
Ultimately, winning over the swing voters comes down to trust. In December last year, it was reported that trust in politicians had reached its lowest score in 40 years with only 10% of Britons saying they trust MPs to tell the truth. It strikes me during our interview how no-nonsense Rayner is compared to the avoidant, waffling archetype of a politician. That's perhaps why she's considered Labour's ultimate weapon, consistently answering tricky questions plainly, with thoughtfulness and ease. But what would Rayner like women to know about her to prove she’s trustworthy?
‘I never thought I would be an MP, let alone be the deputy leader of the Labour Party,’ she says. ‘I think women often find reasons why we think we're not the person for the job and I think that my mentality has always been to do your best. I grew up in a household that was full of poverty, my mum had mental health problems and I was a mum at 16. I know how it is to struggle and to work really hard and still feel like you just can't quite make it because everything's difficult.
I will fight hard every single day to improve our services and make life better for people.
'So, I've lived that life and I know we can do better than what we've got at the moment,' Rayner adds. 'We've got a group of politicians in the Tory party that have been self-serving, that are out of touch and the fact that Rishi Sunak has been going up and down the country saying “Things are improving” tells you how out of touch he is with ordinary, working people’s lives. I will fight hard every single day to improve our services and make life better for people because I know how difficult it is.’