Labour Is Trying To Find Another Angela Rayner, It Probably Won’t

Most politicians try, desperately, to be normal - and most politicians fail at being normal. Our leaders and elected representatives shout endlessly about how tough life was growing up, about how they faced adversity, about how they are just like the voters who elect them. Most of them do this with the knowledge they were cooked up at Oxford, by consultants, or in the tedious circles of student politics. It is exceedingly rare that the people who govern us are the product of the Britain they tell us they believe in. Angela Rayner was an exception to this, a rare politician who happened to just be kind of normal. Without her at the heart of Labour and its government, there will be a huge void - one Labour will try to fill, but won’t be able to. 

To understand Angela Rayner’s rise is to understand the vision of Britain that Labour (and just about everyone else in politics) attempts to champion. You probably know that she was raised on a Stockport council estate, was pregnant at 16, didn’t receive any qualifications from school, became an MP in 2015, and by 2025 had made it to the very highest levels of government. This story alone illustrates the power of government, and the way Labour’s policies can shape society for the better. Rayner, in many ways, was a walking advert for Labour’s mission to build a society that enables everyone to get where they want in life - something that has been unattainable for too long and too many in Britain over the years.

Angela Rayner was, importantly, more than just a story about how someone who doesn’t fit the political mould can climb into the highest levels of government. She was also an incredibly astute politician. She was able to be normal without having to beg voters, as so many politicians who are the sons of toolmakers do, to believe she was like them. She communicated free of traditional constraints, vaped at Labour conference, and was just generally cool (something few if any British politicians can hope to be). In both the shadow cabinet and then cabinet Rayner married this bold personality to the offices she held, and the work she did within them, building her personality into incredible political power. This was evident in the way Rayner’s personality transformed the most important, and least powerful, office she held: deputy leader of the Labour Party. 

The position of deputy leader of the Labour Party is, for all intents and purposes, useless. There is no real power to the elected position within the leadership. It does not give the holder a seat in cabinet or make them heir apparent to the leader. It is merely a constitutional quirk of the Labour Party, one that provides many more headaches than benefits. Yet it was a quirk that Rayner managed to play deftly, using it to gain space in cabinet, accrue personal power and give people a sense she was the future of the party. This political ability is evident in the way she placed herself at the heart of Starmer’s shadow cabinet in 2021, when she could very well have been pushed out. Since that day, she sewed the role of deputy leader to the other offices of state she commanded, and used her soft power in cabinet to advance her mission to secure worker’s rights - doubling the power and reach she had across her party and government. 

With Rayner’s fall from grace, the future for Labour and its government looks a lot less exciting. Governments are measured as much by the talents within them, as their outputs. Rayner exemplifies this acutely. Her talents stretched far and wide, from the ability to be Starmer’s humanising foil to her focus on workers rights, to her ability to speak to parts of the party few, if any, can reach today. Importantly, Rayner exemplified the kinds of people, far from perfect, which parties need to make a success of government and the day to day politics of governing Britain. As they flex their working class credentials to death in forgettable speeches, the current slate of hopefuls vying to fill Labour’s deputy leader role makes this abundantly clear.

Only Angela Rayner could make the position of deputy leader of the Labour Party as purposeful as she did. She was a perfect foil to Starmer and an incredibly powerful politician - not to mention one that was, unlike so many others, about as normal as you can get in a politician. The role of deputy has always been pretty powerless, and will return to being that way under whoever ascends to it next. This fact will leave a huge hole at the heart of Starmer’s government, one labour will desperately try to fill, unsuccessfully. Labour shouldn’t try to find a new Angela Rayner because few, if any, in the party will be able to match the personality and politician that she was as deputy.

Illustration: Will Allen/Europinion