Nestled among Michael Foot’s “donkey jacket”, an empty can of BrewDog Barnard Castle Eye Test beer and a pike from Peterloo, there sits a new exhibit at the People’s History Museum in Manchester: the jacket Angela Rayner wore when she first stood in at prime minister’s questions against Boris Johnson. The now deputy prime minister donated the powder-blue Marks & Spencer fitted knit jacket to the museum, where it is displayed in a glass case alongside a range of other Labour party memorabilia, this summer. “Look, I give clothes away too,” she jokes. Sitting downstairs in the cafe at the museum, Rayner bats away some of the damaging headlines – over donated clothes, staff salaries and bitter Downing Street infighting – that have plagued Labour in recent days, saying she is getting on with the serious business of governing.
As the party prepares for its annual conference in Liverpool, Keir Starmer has faced criticism for declaring more free tickets and gifts than other major party leader in recent times, with his total topping £100,000, including clothes donated to his wife Victoria. For Rayner, the important thing is he did declare the gifts, unlike some of his predecessors in No 10. “Look, the donations rules apply to all of us. Keir is really clear that you have to disclose when you’ve had donations,” she says. “I do think the rules matter. I’ve been slagged off for going to Glyndebourne. I’ve been slagged off for going to Ibiza for four days on my holidays. Am I not allowed to do that? “I get criticised for doing things. [The womenswear brand] ME+EM donated me some suits and I declared them and you know, I’ve donated clothes for charity the other way.” It emerged on Friday evening that Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Rayner would no longer accept free gifts of clothes following the outcry about donations. She was attacked by the Tories for attending the opera festival in 2022, although she paid for the £62 ticket herself. She is also understood to have funded her recent holiday to Ibiza, although she got free entry into a nightclub as the DJ was a friend.
Rayner is keen to get the donations row in proportion, even as it risks becoming symbolic of something greater, with weary voters already suspicious all politicians are the same. She argues it is sometimes impossible for them to get it right. “I think we have to be really careful about the way people criticise politicians. One of the suits from ME+EM was the one that I wore when I walked up Downing Street and I got absolutely slaughtered for ‘the state of her’. You can’t do right for doing wrong sometimes.” Although she laughs it off, she is clearly frustrated at reports swirling around about splits in different quarters of government, saying there is “not a Rizla paper” between her and the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, on workers’ rights plans. “I found it really funny because Johnny comes over for BBQs, he only lives down the road from me. It just tickled me [the idea] that we have issues. We’ve known each other for many years, we’re neighbouring MPs, we’re actually quite close.” She dismisses reports she is annoyed that Reeves, the chancellor, has been given the use of Dorneywood, the grace and favour mansion usually reserved for use by the second-most senior minister. “Rachel wanted Dorneywood, I’m happy for Rachel to be using it. It was never an issue,” she says. “To be honest I haven’t had a weekend where I’d be able to get [there] because I’ve been really busy. I’m sure Rachel will let me go and visit Dorneywood if I want to.”
Rayner wants to get on with governing. Her portfolio covers not just workers’ rights but also housing, planning and local government, where the government has already announced major changes, and legislation to drive them through. But she acknowledges it will take time. “I think people recognise that what we’ve inherited is really, really bad. I think people are angry about it because you can’t run your finances like that because it eventually catches up with you. We’ve been tasked with clearing up the mess. “You have to level with people where we’re at, because people have to understand you can only work with what you’ve got. Then you’ve got a plan of how we get out of it. And we’ve already been talking about that plan, and we’ve already been enacting it.” Rayner predicts that people will begin to notice a difference within five years – and be able to see tangible change that the government has brought about. “Within five years, people will have a better life. We won’t be able to fix everything immediately. But you will see the sprigs and the difference that the Labour government has made.”
Yet there will be more tough choices along the way – with the budget looming next month and more public sector cuts and tax rises to come. Rayner acknowledges Labour has not got everything right, but she defends the controversial decision to cut winter fuel allowance for all but the poorest pensioners. “We were left in a really difficult situation. That was a decision that had to be made. The mitigation that is under way is significant. But all our postboxes have been full of worried people. We’re having to make tough decisions now, because the Tories didn’t then.” While Rayner acknowledges Labour’s coalition of voters may be fragile despite its huge majority, she believes the party can hold it together in order to win again, giving it time to implement its 10-year project to transform the country. “Why we won is because we were talking about the issues that were important to a lot of people in the run up to the general election. Now we’ve got to deliver on the issues that are important to people,” she says. “I think over-promising and under-delivering has been a curse for politicians because people have become disillusioned with that and frustrated and don’t see politics as a vehicle of change. “That’s why we’ve now got to deliver. That’s why we can’t go round sticking empty slogans on the side of a bus. We’ve got to be realistic about what we’re able to achieve.” Does this woman who grew up in poverty on a Stockport council estate and left school pregnant at 16, then went on to become the second-most powerful person in the government, sometimes pinch herself? “People say: ‘What’s it like, is it dead exciting?’” she said. “It’s like, no, it’s really serious. I’m in the room now and I’m making decisions that will impact on people’s lives. It just feels like I’ve got a job to do.”