Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has opened up about the heartbreaking question her eldest son asked of her, and the determined response she gave in return
Angela Rayner has opened up about the difficult conversation she’s had to have with her son, shedding light on juggling family life with a career at the very top of politics.
Stockport-born Rayner, who grew up in poverty, became pregnant for the first time when she was just 16, later telling Labour voters that becoming a mum spurred her on to build a better life for herself.
Addressing a Labour fringe event in 2017, Rayner, 44, explained: “Because I had a little person that I had to look after, and I wanted to prove to everybody I wasn’t the scumbag they thought I was going to be, and I could be a good mum, and that somebody was finally going to love me as much as I deserved to be loved. And that’s what pregnancy was for me, it saved me.”
In 2010, Rayner married her now ex-husband, Mark Rayner, with whom she shares sons Charlie and Jimmy. Nowadays, Charlie, who is registered blind, is studying at college while Jimmy is working toward his GCSEs.
Rayner became a grandmother at the age of 37 when eldest son, Ryan, then 20, welcomed daughter Lilith Mae, sparking the nickname ‘Grangela’.
The Deputy Prime Minister has previously expressed just how important family life is to her – and a new interview makes it clear how much she misses her three sons as she throws herself into her Downing Street duties.
Although Ryan left home long ago, teenagers Charlie and Jimmy live with their dad, Mark, on the outskirts of Manchester, where Rayner has her Ashton-under-Lyne constituency.
Meanwhile, Rayner now mainly resides in ministerial apartments at the Grade I listed Admiralty House, which faces Whitehall. Naturally, it hasn’t always been an easy adjustment for the mum-of-three, who spoke about missing her children during an interview with The Times.
In the piece, Rayner says her sons “come to visit me, of course”, before adding “it’s Ryan’s birthday today”. Later that same evening, Rayner made light of the situation during a call with Labour activists, in which she joked one of her sons was on the call “because it’s the only way he can get to see me”.
Elsewhere in the interview, Rayner spoke of the abuse she’s dealt with since becoming Deputy PM, with snobbish trolls blasting her as “thick” in cruel online comments on account of her working-class background.
Recalling how son Ryan once scrolled through the vile insults and “saw all the abuse I was getting”, Rayner paused before saying: “He asked me, ‘Mum, is it worth it?’”
Then, showing the same determination that has helped her move through the ranks, Rayner continued: “I told him we need people to step up, particularly women. Some are stepping down because of the abuse they get, and then we lose that representation. But — yes — I told him, absolutely it’s still worth it.”
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