𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

There’s a running (unfunny) joke in our house about Angela Rayner. Whenever the secretary of state for housing, communities and local Government appears on television my other half sniggers that she is “so like me”. Ha ha ha. It’s true that Angela Rayner and I share the same first name. We both have long, naturally red hair. We’re also, as we say in our part of the world, “gobby Northerners,” born and bred in Manchester.

The comparisons end there – providing the perfect platform from which to see how Rayner’s carefully curated image as a “woman of the people” hardly withstands even the lightest scrutiny. Her up-the-workers, no-nonsense, unvarnished brand of identity politics is meant to project authenticity. Semaphoring to the world that she understands and champions the underdog. Yet such a position hardly squares with a woman whose smug hypocrisy when it comes to personal comfort is routinely exposed.

Yes, her rise from teenage single mum and care worker to one of the highest offices in the land is impressive. She’s worked hard to earn the salary and status that come with it.

But along with grit and hard graft, Rayner has shown a deplorable two-faced attitude towards the wealth and privilege she so loudly condemns.

How can she pose as a tribune of the people, railing against the “filthy rich,” while reportedly using clever legal manoeuvres to minimise her tax bill?

Her saving around £40,000 in stamp duty by declaring her £800,000 Hove flat as her primary residence may have been within the law but hardly embodies solidarity with struggling workers. The optics alone are terrible, especially for a politician responsible for delivering affordable housing.

Nor is this the only example. A self-styled critic of the Right-to-Buy scheme – who deplores the discounts it grants – she sold the former council house, bought in 2007 for around £79,000, for nearly £127,500. Legal, of course. But clashing with her crowing rhetoric about transparency and fairness.

You can, of course, be an authentic working-class hero and still accrue wealth – John Lennon proved that. What’s vital is to own your success. In my own case, I benefited from a scholarship to a private school, something my non-professional parents could never have afforded. I had a posh education and don’t pretend otherwise.

So yes, Angela Rayner and I may share some surface traits. But the message from one gobby Mancunian to another is simple: we see you. Until you ’fess up to the choices you’ve made, you cannot credibly claim to be a “woman of the people.”

Not while sitting in a stamp-duty-free ivory tower, telling this fellow gobby Northerner you know exactly how we feel.