Is Angela Rayner a new ‘Boris’ in the making?

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There’s certainly no doubt they share the same fierce ambition, and despite coming from very different economic backgrounds, both grew up with a degree of instability.

Born in Stockport, Greater Manchester, in 1980, Rayner attended Avondale School in nearby Cheadle Heath before leaving at the age of 16, after she became pregnant.

She. has given cameal interviews about her “feral” childhood, recalling how her bipolar mother once back from the food shops, thinking it was stewing steak, because she couldn’t read the label

Johnson’s late mother, Charlotte Wahl, also suffered from mental health problems throughout her life, often leaving her brood in the care of a “chain-smoking nanny”.

Rayner has spoken of her father’s affairs and her parents’ “explosive” relationship – again, revealing an upbringing with eerie similarities to Mr Johnson’s. Yet where he found educational salvation at Eton and Oxford, Rayner left school without a qualification to her name.

Yet showing the sort of grit for which she is now renowned, the teenage mother of a baby boy studied part-time at Stockport College, learning British Sign Language, and gaining an NVQ Level 2 in social care before getting a job as a council care worker. After joining Unison, she was elected as a trade union representative before swiftly rising through the ranks to become the union’s most official in the region.

There, she met Mark Rayner, a Unison official, and the couple, who have two sons together, married in 2010.

Four years later, she was selected as the Labor candidate for Ashton-under-Lyne and won the seat at the 2015 general election, increasing the Labor majority and its share of the vote.

But it seems her stratospheric climb up Labor’s greasy pole came at the detriment of her marriage, with Rayner ending her 10-year union three months before she launched her bid for the Labor leadership following the 2019 general election. Ironically, Johnson reached a financial settlement with Marina Wheeler, his wife of 25 years, in February 2020, around the time the Rayners’ marriage fell apart. It came after the father-of-seven was linked to Carrie Symonds, the Conservative Party’s former head of communications, who became his third wife last year.

Much has been made of Ms Rayner’s closeness to Tarry, the Momentum-backed MP for Ilford South, who ran her campaign for the deputy leadership to replace Tom Watson.

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