Angela my little shadow: New biography reveals relentless bullying

Lord Ashcroft’s discoveries about Angela Rayner’s right-to-buy council house, first revealed in The Mail on Sunday final month, proceed to trigger main political fallout for Labour’s No 2. Now, on this unique last extract from his substantial new biography of one of the vital highly effective ladies in Britain, the peer charts her astonishing transformation from bullied schoolgirl to Left-wing firebrand. 

If there may be one factor Labour’s deputy chief may be relied on to speak about, it’s her disadvantaged working-class childhood, which culminated in her turning into a mom at 16 and a low-paid house assist. Again and once more, Angela Rayner has returned to the subject – at Labour Party conferences, in media interviews, even within the Commons debating chamber. Along along with her blazing purple hair and her penchant for making inflammatory remarks, it’s helped make her a semi-celebrity amid a sea of middle-class MPs.

Her advisers have tried to steer her to ‘change the record’, says a former colleague, and discover new issues to speak about, however she refused. An ex-colleague stated: ‘We did say to her, “Angela, we’ve got to move on from this stuff and focus on the future. You need to give them some idea of where you want to take people.”

‘But she would always hark back to her hard-luck history because it was the fail-safe method she used to disarm journalists or critics and for building up her reputation within the Labour Party. When she told her back story at Labour meetings they would always lap it up, and she would say, “It’s catnip to them.” Those have been her phrases.

‘She was privately very dismissive of their response, but publicly she’d settle for all of the hugs and embraces individuals would give her as a self-proclaimed working-class heroine. She knew it performed so nicely within the Labour Party.’

This is to not detract from the real hardships Angela Rayner has been via, the challenges she overcame and her outstanding rise via the Labour ranks – from new MP in 2015 to shadow schooling secretary barely a 12 months later beneath Jeremy Corbyn, and now shadow deputy prime minister.

Yet how a lot do we actually find out about Angela Rayner? I made a decision to attempt to discover out extra about her, and commenced by revisiting her childhood in Stockport, Greater Manchester.

Rayner – whose maiden identify was Bowen – has been open about the truth that her dad and mom relied on welfare funds and Giro cheques. Yet in keeping with a number of individuals who knew the household when Angela was a baby, her father was additionally ‘a ducker and a diver’ who dabbled in varied money-making schemes, together with driving a taxi, and was typically absent from house for lengthy intervals.

Ironically, he was what Rayner disparagingly calls a ‘council house Tory’, who railed in opposition to ‘scroungers’ whereas fortunately cashing in his welfare cheques.

He had a fast mood – generally horrifying her a lot as a baby that she moist the mattress – and an explosive relationship along with his spouse. Adding to the household’s issues was that Rayner’s mom Lynne suffered from bipolar dysfunction – inflicting dramatic temper swings. Lynne had left faculty early, and will neither learn nor write. Once, says Rayner, her mom mistook a can of shaving foam for whipped cream as a result of she couldn’t learn its label, and on one other event she served canine meat considering it was stewing steak.

The household’s three-bedroom council home had threadbare carpets over concrete, and was incessantly chilly as a result of the Bowens couldn’t afford to pay the payments. Certainly, life for his or her three youngsters was at occasions barely tolerable.

‘We’d exit all of the day to keep away from being in the home as a result of there could be shouting or one thing, so we’d be frightened as children to stay round.,’ Rayner has stated. ‘I’d exit on the road on the property. The in-crowd children would beat me up. And then if I went house and informed my dad I’d been crushed up, he’d inform me off, floor me and smack me for being so weak and permitting [myself] to be crushed up. So it was fairly powerful at occasions.’

Fortunately, their paternal grandmother Jean lived in a close-by high-rise and offered the youngsters with a stabilising affect. ‘For the most part, I was raised by my grandma, who worked at three jobs to put food on the table,’ Rayner has acknowledged.

Since her dad and mom by no means purchased her new sneakers, ‘Nana’ Jean gave her a pair with metal toecaps. ‘She said they’ll last more at college – and I received completely bullied [because of them] once I was youthful,’ stated Rayner.

As the years handed, her mom’s behaviour grew to become more and more unpredictable, and Rayner incessantly ended up having to take care of her – even bathing her.

‘By the age of ten, I became my mum’s important carer,’ she revealed in 2017. ‘I became the adult. She’s been out and in of psychiatric care. I bear in mind at ten my mum being suicidal and me sleeping like a canine on the top of her mattress… so she didn’t do any hurt to herself.’

It was maybe unsurprising that, at main faculty, Angela was discovered to be missing in studying and social expertise.

For three years, nevertheless, she was an enthusiastic member of the No 9 Stockport Girl Guides. The chief – whom all the women known as Captain – was Kathleen Potts, now 90. She remembers Rayner as an earnest youngster who’d joined the troop in 1990, when she was ten years outdated. ‘She was a pretty little girl with the most glorious head of red hair,’ says Mrs Potts. ‘She was never a nuisance and was unfailingly polite towards me. In fact, if any of the other girls were being a bit naughty, she would put them right.’

Mrs Potts knew on the time that Rayner’s background was sophisticated. ‘One of the first things I remember learning from her was that her mother could not read and write. Nobody ever mentioned anything about her father, and clearly she was the one looking after her mum. Angie was so mature for her years. I remember she had an older brother and a younger sister – she seemed to look after all of them. She didn’t actually have a childhood.’

In September 1991, aged 11, Rayner started her first time period at Avondale School, a complete a few mile from her house. Rayner has been characteristically upfront about this era, by no means attempting to disguise the truth that she achieved no GCSEs above a grade D.

‘School was the place where I hung about with my mates and got a meal,’ she defined. ‘My mum didn’t perceive that schooling was an necessary factor.’

She has additionally stated: ‘My school was a failing school. And I was a failing pupil. But look at me – I’m sat right here as one of the vital profitable feminine politicians of my time.’

But was Avondale actually such a foul faculty through the 5 years she attended it? The fact is {that a} 1994 Ofsted inspection report – revealed two years after Rayner arrived – described it as ‘a caring, happy school which makes good provision for its pupils.’ Nowhere in Ofsted’s 1994 report does the phrase ‘failing’ seem.

The headmaster, Ian Tunnard, knew the identify of each pupil within the faculty and tried to maintain a decent grip on bullying, truancy and delinquent behaviour.

‘My door was literally and metaphorically always open,’ he recalled. ‘I tried to be a constant presence. I was straight-talking. I was not afraid to permanently exclude those who clearly were never going to change their ways and were ruining our chance to educate others.’

He has robust recollections of Rayner, calling her a ‘little shadow’, as a result of she was a semi-permanent fixture by his facet throughout lunch and break occasions – significantly, he believes, from the age of 13 or 14. The cause?

She wanted to be shielded from different youngsters.

‘Things were difficult for her. She was bullied. She came to tell me, though, and I gave her a place of safety. I wasn’t conscious who I used to be defending her from – she by no means informed me that.

‘I understood why. In her case, there was a very real possibility that she would have had to walk home with those same protagonists, and I wouldn’t be there to guard her then. I couldn’t be certain that she was secure across the clock. She was clearly susceptible, as a result of she got here from a really troublesome, disadvantaged background.’

Rayner herself has stated the explanation she did so badly at Avondale was as a result of she was already method behind her friends. ‘So therefore by the time I got to secondary school, it wasn’t the factor I needed to do as a result of I already felt inferior to those that’d had a head begin on me.’

She was additionally very upset when somebody informed her she’d quantity to nothing, be on advantages all her life and have youngsters by totally different fathers. It defies perception that anybody might have been so callous to a baby, however Tunnard, to his credit score, doesn’t dismiss the chance that Rayner was referring to one in every of his lecturers.

‘I have to be honest and say I can’t describe [Angela] as a star. I’d by no means say something like that to a pupil, although. To get the perfect out of them you’ve got to respect them, in any other case they’ll by no means respect you.

‘I had one ex-head of department who would dismiss some children as beyond helping. He would say, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” I took him to activity for that. So I can nicely consider Angela may need been informed that by a member of workers at my faculty.’

Tunnard might bear in mind Rayner as his little shadow, however she has admitted being a ‘wild child’ who typically frequented nightclubs in Manchester. At 13 or 14, she stated, ‘I was already going out clubbing meeting men – not boys, men – and being out with my friends. I was quite feral.’

She cheerfully owns as much as having tried medicine in her teenagers. Poppers, she stated, made her ‘laugh that hard that I annoyed the people around me… and weed made me sick, ’cos I smoked far an excessive amount of of it and ended up throwing up all around the carpet, so I believed this isn’t actually for me.’

Rayner additionally admits that her father grew involved by her journeys to Manchester. ‘My dad used to have to pick me up from nightclubs when I was 14 because he couldn’t cease me from going. So it received to the purpose the place he stated, “I will pick you up outside and then I know you’re getting home safely.”’

This means that, for all his faults, Martyn Bowen took a minimum of some curiosity in his eldest daughter’s welfare.

What Rayner might not have realised as she sat her GCSEs was that she was within the very early levels of being pregnant. The father of her youngster was Neil Batty, a automotive valet three years her senior, who’d apparently met her in a nightclub. Rayner says her father threw her out when he found she was pregnant. But when she gave start to her first son, Ryan Batty, in February 1997, her dad and mom’ home was given as her ‘usual address’ on the start certificates, as was her grandmother Jean’s tackle.

Apparently, Rayner and Batty had ended up dwelling for a short while along with her dad and mom after which along with her grandmother earlier than transferring into their very own council flat just some streets away.

Neil Batty didn’t draw back from his duties. One of his kinfolk has stated: ‘Neil was good for [Angela] because he gave her a lot of stability and an escape from her situation. He was a bit older and working. His family background was also very different and a lot more settled. They were a lovely young couple.’

Since turning into an MP, Rayner has not often spoken of Batty. One of her few feedback was: ‘Neil was 20 B&H [cigarettes] and a Ford Fiesta, so that was never going to last, was it? Aged 16, I sold myself very short.’

In any case, the connection didn’t final lengthy. Rayner claims he left her on her 18th birthday, and says they’d lived collectively solely till she was sufficiently old to have a council tenancy in her personal identify.

After they went their separate methods, Batty continued to be a daily presence in his son’s life, supporting him financially as and when he might. Nevertheless, inside just a few years of the start, Rayner was successfully a single mom reliant on revenue assist. But removed from being despondent, she felt motherhood had lastly given her a way of function.

By 1998, when Rayner was 18, she was decided to get a job – as a result of, as she put it, she needed to show ‘I wasn’t going to be on advantages all my life and be the scumbag that everybody determined I used to be going to be’.

At one level, she was promoting roses round pubs and golf equipment. In 1998, she grew to become a house assist – buying, cleansing and making ready meals for aged purchasers. She has admitted that, together with different colleagues, she minimize corners.

‘We’d have a 12-hour shift that we’d do in six hours,’ she stated. ‘Obviously we robbed people of care. I didn’t see it that method. It’s simply the best way it was organised. If somebody had an hour name, you’d attempt to get it performed in 35 minutes.’

After about six months of working within the non-public sector, Rayner took a job in 2000 with Stockport Council, once more as a house assist. What lastly politicised her was becoming a member of the commerce union Unison to protest at council plans to switch their house assist service to the non-public sector.

Within 12 months, she had turn into a store steward, and later proved so efficient that she swiftly graduated to extra necessary posts within the union. Along the best way, she joined the Labour Party, and had two extra youngsters – with Mark Rayner, a union official 17 years her senior – then married him in 2010.

Rayner’s quickness and intelligence have been now not unsure. Three years after her marriage, two main unions – Unison and Unite – have been pushing the Labour get together to just accept her as a potential MP.

Still solely in her early 30s, she triumphed in a women-only shortlist and have become the Labour candidate for Ashton-under-Lyne.

Two weeks later, she was making a speech on the Labour Party convention, championing the reason for extra money and coaching for assist workers in colleges. Further insights into her model of politics got here with the tenth anniversary of the foxhunting ban. ‘I support the campaign to #keeptheban,’ she introduced on Facebook, alongside {a photograph} of a fox working previous 10 Downing Street. The speech bubble rising from its jaws learn: ‘Cull the Tories!’

One of the volunteers who labored with Rayner throughout her election marketing campaign recollects: ‘She needed quite a bit of advice – how to position and present ­herself, her website, what was the public face of Angela Rayner and so on.

‘I remember she needed help with writing statements, letters, press releases etc because ­writing is definitely not her strong point. But of course she excelled verbally.

‘But I liked her and the working-class shtick that she did ad nauseam, and I thought she was a promising potential politician. Her husband really managed her campaign, in as far as anyone can manage Angela.’

At the 2015 common election, Rayner received her seat with 19,366 votes, whereas her Tory rival scored solely 8,610.

One of the primary issues she was known as on to determine was who could be the subsequent Labour chief. She backed the comparatively reasonable Andy Burnham, then broadly thought-about to be the favorite.

But when the hard-Left backbencher Jeremy Corbyn ended up topping the ballot, Rayner had no problem in switching allegiance. It was a clever transfer, one that might quickly assist propel her up the ministerial ladder. What was it that Corbyn noticed in her? Certainly, her class politics and connections to the unions stood her in good stead.

It additionally helped that she shortly grew to become near the MP Rebecca Long-Bailey, who’d been one in every of Corbyn’s 36 unique backers. The two ladies would go on to share a flat in London collectively through the week.

Another plus for Rayner was that she hadn’t backed MP Tom Watson as deputy chief. This gave her added credibility with the brand new chief­ship group, as there was friction between Watson and Corbyn.

Despite being an entire newcomer to Westminster, Rayner was instantly appointed a junior whip – her first shadow frontbench publish. And her inventory with Corbyn rose nonetheless additional when she spoke out in opposition to the defence trade. Very shortly, she was thought-about a part of the inside circle of MPs who supported his socialist challenge for Britain.

As a former colleague of Rayner’s defined: ‘There was a group of about 30 MPs who met regularly at the beginning of Jeremy’s management and Angela was a part of that. She was explicitly supportive of Jeremy as quickly as he was elected.’

By the top of 2016, simply 18 months after being elected as an MP, it appeared that beneath Jeremy Corbyn, Rayner had a brilliant future. Former colleagues say she met each Monday evening in Westminster with members of Corbyn’s circle however tried to maintain it secret from her colleagues. What Corbyn in all probability didn’t realise was that she was not at all times as supportive of him behind the scenes as he may need assumed. Fascinatingly, one former colleague remembers Rayner mocking his model of Twenty first-century socialism, revealing: ‘She did say to me at various times, “These people are Trots.”’

‘But then she’d serve alongside them anyway. Ambition is the important thing to Angela. That was the place the ability was at the moment within the Labour Party so she performed the sport with Corbyn. She would do something to additional her personal profession and place. She’s actually pushed by that thirst for place and energy.’

So far, it has paid off. She continues to be solely 43. And if Labour win the subsequent common election, she’s going to turn into the second strongest politician within the nation.

© Michael Ashcroft, 2024. Adapted from Red Queen? by Michael Ashcroft, to be revealed by Biteback on March 19 at £20. To order a replica for £18 (supply legitimate to March 30; UK p&p free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or name 020 3176 2937. 

 Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is a global businessman, philanthropist, creator and pollster. For extra data on his work, go to lordashcroft.com Follow him on X or Facebook @LordAshcroft