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Labour’s campaign bus travels through the outskirts of manchester and Angela Rayner pointing at me with feigned indignation. “Tom! What did you do to my lettuce?” I refuse to admit and insist that I didn’t even touch it. “Well, someone did something,” she says suspiciously.
The vegetable is decorated to look like this who ignominiously triumphed in Daily Starcompetition to see if he can outlast Liz Truss as Prime Minister. Labour’s deputy leader decrees he needs “surgery” and a minor operation is carried out to replace the missing buzzing eye. The lettuce is then placed back in the fridge, which has itself become an unlikely star of this election.
It all started when Rayner said Sky News about her plan to tour Britain 5,000 miles in her new campaign bus, before adding, with perfect comic timing: “You’ll love it – it’s got a fridge.” Both the fridge and the lettuce have since appeared in a TikTok video filled with the kind of free spirit that is sometimes a little lacking in the more buttoned-down approach that Keir Starmer has taken to this campaign.
After the bus arrived in Manchester to be greeted by a throng of supporters, regional mayor Andy Burnham compared Rayner to John Prescott, the former deputy leader once famous for his campaign bus tours. The difference this time, he says, is, “Angela has the ability to connect with people without actually hitting anyone.”
Indeed, on BBC TV’s Friday night debate, she was restrained as Tory opponent Penny Mordaunt repeatedly prodded and interrupted her. But Rayner knows that part of her role in this election is to cheer up Labor and, sitting in the back row on the bus with her, the next display of down-to-earth humanity is never far away. At one point she frowned at some food on the table. “Is it vegan?” she asks. After making sure it contains all kinds of animal products (that the lettuce is really just for show), she takes a bite of a pie. “Oh look at that. ham! Some real ham!”
Rainer then opens her arms wide and describes how she feels “unleashed” now that she’s been authorized by the police for any wrongdoing in the sale of her former council house in Stockport. But those weeks when she was under investigation were obviously tough. The controversy has fueled what sometimes appears to be a reasonable interest in her personal life and living arrangements, which include becoming pregnant with her first child before her GCSEs and then two more with her now ex-husband.
She believes that political opponents are simply “asking me to stay in my lane and telling me to go back to my seat”. She adds: “It’s terrible when people tell you that you’re not good in the way you talk or act. They try to make you feel like you don’t belong. I always felt like I had to prove myself. As a young mother, I received the same tone from the housing department. It’s another thing if you have a 20-year-old child, but at 16 people are judging you. I had to prove that I could look after my child.”
There is hypocrisy, she says, in the attacks on her by very wealthy men whose non-resident status has allowed them to avoid – legally – paying many millions of pounds more in tax than the relatively small amount she is accused of evading. “When I bought my house, I had an estate agent and a conveyancing solicitor,” she points out. “That’s what normal working people do. I didn’t have many tax advisors and accountants.
Does he want to move into another form of public housing, such as the stately Dorneywood home usually given to those who hold the office of Deputy Prime Minister? “I haven’t even thought about it. I love my little flat in London. She will not make the mistake of “weighing the curtains” for power when the election has not yet been won, and in any case in such a place “there would be quite a few curtains, wouldn’t there?”
Reiner tries to deny that the apparent contrast in style between her and Starmer represents deeper differences than the kind they had in 2021, when she found out from the media that he was trying to put her down. Indeed, the unwavering support he gave to Reiner when she was attacked recently is said by both sides to have strengthened the bond that helps keep the party’s big tent upright.
“We work well together,” she says, “we have each other’s backs and now we have a bit of banter. Sometimes he’ll tell me I’m wrong about something and sometimes I’ll tell him. When you’re looking at a problem, you don’t just want to “yes” people around you. It’s good to question each other.”
However, there were claims in that campaign that she was undermining Starmer first with public support Diane Abbott’s right to be a Labor Party candidate then proclaimed she wanted multilateral disarmament on the day he wanted to highlight Labour’s support for Britain having nuclear weapons.
“Keir and I are not in a different place about Diane,” she says, before going on to describe how Labor the leader would never have authorized the anonymous briefing in which Abbott was supposedly barred from rising. “I kind of know how it ticks and doesn’t act like that. He is a stickler for following the rules. Is it true that she phoned Faiza Shaheen, another leftist who – unlike Abbott – was blocked from standing up? “I’m not going to go into what private conversations I’m having,” Raynor replies, suddenly stiffening.
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On nuclear weapons, she expresses surprise that anyone would find her remarks controversial. “Margaret Thatcher was a multilateralist,” Rayner says, while insisting that voting against the renewal of the Trident eight years ago did not make her a unilateralist. “I sincerely hope that every leader would want a world where we don’t have these weapons, but now we live in a world where we have Putin and we have to have a nuclear deterrent.”
This is part of her serious side that is all too easily overlooked. For example, it’s worth noting that someone who looks as tribal as Rayner wants to have a meeting with Michael Gove – “old Govey”, as she calls the promotion secretary – about housing policy now that he has announced that will leave frontline politics.
“I really respect him in a way. He pointed out some of the problems and solutions. He wanted to do some things about planning reforms, but Tory MPs stopped him.
Then she smiles again as she adds, “Me and Michael like a disco, right? He could have paid me the five bucks to come in, and then we’d have a disco together.
There will be less room for jokes and dances in government. “If we win on the Fourth of July, the real work starts on the Fifth of July. I don’t have a holiday booked for the summer. The opportunity to make a difference can come and go quickly. Kiir won’t bring us to the table if we’re not for it.
She points out that this is the most Labor shadow cabinet in a generation. It’s not just her and Starmer, but people like Bridget Phillipson, who was raised on benefits by a single mother and is “passionate about education” because she “knows what it did for her.”
Raynor then pauses and looks straight ahead as he adds, “It makes us feel this real sense of responsibility. This is not a game for us.”
Keir Starmer: The Biography by Tom Baldwin is published by William Collins (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Shipping charges may apply
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