The rise and rise of Angela Rayner

It’s up to the deputy leader to reconnect the Labour Party with its roots – and, writes Tom Peck, evidence suggests you’d have to be brave to bet against her

Rayner stands in for Keir Starmer at PMQS (AFP/Getty)

When Angela Rayner stood in for the self-isolating Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions last week, her staff were braced for a backlash that never happened. In her five years as one of Jeremy Corbyn’s most visible shadow ministers, and in her more recent six months as the Labour Party’s deputy leader, whenever Rayner has appeared on television, it has been met with a depressingly inevitable reaction on social media.

“The Vicky Pollard stuff” is how one member of her team jovially describes it, though it is not a jovial matter. It is foul and abusive, and not worth repeating in detail, other than to say that it is hardly shocking that there should be a large corner of the internet that seems unable to cope with the idea that a working-class woman who left school at 16 with no qualifications while pregnant might be doing rather more with her life than they are.

But it is surprising that, on Wednesday lunchtime, they were conspicuously quiet. Rayner, by common consent, gave an outstanding performance. Silencing Boris Johnson on these occasions has, in the past few months, come to look rather easy. Silencing the worst of social media is a challenge of a different order of magnitude.