On Friday, Angela Rayner was appointed as the new Deputy Prime Minister of Britain. Who is Angela Rayner? She was born in Stockport in 1980 and grew up in a council estate. She left school at the age of sixteen without any qualifications and was pregnant with her first child. Rayner married Unison official Mark Rayner in 2010, and the couple separated in 2020. She has three children and became a grandmother in 2017.
Rayner entered Parliament in 2015 when she became the first woman to represent her constituency, Ashton-under-Lyne, in its 180-year history. She continued to serve as the Shadow Minister for Pensions in the Shadow Cabinet before becoming a member of the Shadow Cabinet, where she held briefs on education, women, and equality. She was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 2020 but was removed from her position as party chair following poor results in the English local elections. In September 2023, she was appointed Shadow Secretary in a cabinet reshuffle aimed at putting "the strongest potential players on the field" ahead of the upcoming elections.
