Look down on me at your peril: I’ll eat you alive

Angela Rayner is perhaps the only Labour MP who works with a picture of Theresa May hanging above her desk. It’s there for inspiration, she says, a daily reminder of the general incompetence of the Conservative government and the need for its removal. ‘That picture motivates me, in a strange way,’ she says when we meet. ‘They are doing such a bad job of Brexit, and a lot of people will be let down. Again. The people who already think that politicians are lower than a snake’s belly.’ The anger is with politicians in general. ‘It just feels that this generation is not doing a very good job.’

Ms Rayner, 37, has been a politician for not even three years and her rise has been nothing short of extraordinary. A few years ago, she was a care-home worker with an interest in politics but no career plans. She stood for Ashton-under-Lyne in the 2015 general election and ended up becoming Jeremy Corbyn’s third shadow education secretary in the space of a week.