I interview Angela Rayner, the Shadow Education Secretary, for the forthcoming edition of The Spectator. I met her before Christmas and was fascinated by the way she explains her politics in terms of her biography. She tells me how much she owes to a welfare state that was there for her, in a way that it wasn’t for her mum, who left school aged 12. She worked her way up, and says a few Tories ask her why she isn’t a Conservative. Simple, she says: Labour is the party of the helping hand, and the Tories are not very sympathetic to single parents like her. The ones who’ve made it: sure, Tories like them. They like success. But those who still struggle? Who might not be so successful? Only Labour stands for them.
I could have ran four pages words of interview with her. She’s a fascinating character, a fighter who’ll go berserk
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