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Meet the Labour lioness: How ‘Grangela’ is battling for stardom

 (Natasha Pszenicki)
(Natasha Pszenicki)

Angela Rayner is by far the most intriguing figure on the Labour front bench — in every sense of the word. Her nickname, “Grangela” reflects her status as a youthful grandmother. It is also fast becoming a reflection of her grand plan to supersede a flailing Keir Starmer as the star of the thinly-illuminated Labour firmament. Hungry enough to earn a tease in the Commons from Boris Johnson as the Labour lioness, “the prize hunter of the pack”, she looked flattered.

Colleagues relished the barb as much as Rayner revelled in it. She and Starmer embody “style versus substance,” observes one senior MP caught between the two camps. “Rayner has the flair and Starmer the seriousness. But they can’t combine the ingredients and personally, they don’t gel at all.”

In the bitter fallout from the lost Hartlepool by-election, a joke doing the rounds in the quarrelsome shadow cabinet is that the newly-minted “shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, shadow secretary of state for the future of work and deputy leader of the Opposition” has acquired “more titles than Colonel Gaddafi” — with the Grangela grandiosity to match. A subsequent Twitter announcement of “my shadow cabinet team”, signalling that Rayner considers a raft of shadow ministers — who formally answer to Starmer — to be her political assets which was, as one insider put it “a bit much”.

Eyebrows were raised too in the London Mayor’s inner circle, when they found his poll victory chalked up by Rayner on Twitter to her role “as chair of Sadiq Khan’s re-election bid”. A source on team Khan notes pithily that she was “supportive, but mainly busy campaigning outside London”. Boasts like, “no one puts Angela in a corner” sound good on first hearing but grate on many in the ranks who feel they work as hard or harder for a party that is in trouble.

Few doubt that Rayner has earned prominence for her easy manner, wit and a personal story of overcoming hardship to rise in politics. She grew up in a home so poor she recalls having to skip meals, unloved (on her own account ) by a struggling mother, had her first child at 16 and would have languished in low-paid jobs were it not for finding a role in the trade union movement, where she flourished as an organiser. To be where she is today is a huge achievement. But the biggest danger is falling for own mythology and the vanity which accompanies that. The point of a gripping “back story” in politics is that it needs to be turned into a convincing and consistent “front story” which can smooth over differences and win friends across the wings of a panicky Opposition. “She needs to override factions to advance,” says one figure who sat on the front bench with her. “Right now, she’s tweaking Starmer’s tail so openly, it looks disloyal.”

At last night’s meeting of Labour MPs, Starmer took only a handful of questions, mostly from his defenders — evidently keen to avoid a long post-mortem. It did not look like the appearance of a confident helmsman fighting back and Rayner’s taunt that he stands for for bland “magnolia politics” is keenly felt.

Yet if she wishes to rise above the carping and Tory-bashing, she needs a clearer platform of her own. One effect of accumulating jobs is that she is also acquiring “a massive staff” to work on policy innovation, her weakest suit. A vague stint as shadow education secretary produced no policy advances besides a “national education service” which has signalled little beyond hostility to results league tables and the city academies programme.

Rayner has quiet competition too —from the resurrection of Rachel Reeves as shadow chancellor. Reeves, as one prominent Left-winger notes, is “on manoeuvres” — adopting popular internal causes such as “in-sourcing” jobs from the private sector and attacking the record of public-service providers.

Left or Right, politics is a calculating trade and not one in which boastfulness and charm pays off. No doubt about it: Rayner has showmanship and guts, which is one reason she insisted on shadowing Michael Gove — a daring call, given that he is regarded as one of its best debate performers.

Merging style and substance is the mix that eludes Labour and makes its fortunes dull and disastrous. Now it has two figures, overtly alienated from one another at the helm and another shrewd Powerfrau emerging as shadow chancellor. So much for the Labour soap opera: the next power struggle is only just beginning.

Anne McElvoy is Senior Editor at the Economist